The Desert Lord's Bride by Olivia Gates

This was all wrong. He was supposed to be the one performing the seduction.

He was always in control, taking what was on offer or leaving it. No woman had ever had him a breath away from insanity.

But as Shehab broke the kiss and gazed over Farah’s swollen lips and shining eyes, over the perfection posed in a mind-blowing offering, he couldn’t remember how this had started, or why he must not take what his body was bellowing for, come what may.

He’d been wrong about her. This unpredictable enchantress was nothing like the hardened vixen he’d expected.

And she was infinitely more dangerous for it.

Wed by Deception by Emilie Rose

Lucas wanted to kill the man who’d stolen his wife from him.

But with Kincaid already dead, vengeance was beyond reach. Or was it?

Why give up an eleven-year-old vendetta just because he wouldn’t get to see his enemy writhe in defeat? He could still have the satisfaction of knowing he’d won, and that was what really mattered.

He stared at the door Nadia had slammed in his face. He could still have the pleasure of holding all his nemesis once possessed. Beginning with Nadia.

The Desert Lord's Bride

OLIVIA GATES

Wed by Deception

EMILIE ROSE

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

THE DESERT LORD'S BRIDE

by

Olivia Gates

OLIVIA GATES

has always pursued creative passions – painting, singing and many handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career: writing.

She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heart-wrenching heartache and hope, their every heart-pounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.

When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding angora cat. Visit Olivia at www.oliviagates.com.

Dear Reader,

When the throne of a phenomenally prosperous desert kingdom is at stake, and with it the peace of a whole region, what will its heirs do to secure it? Anything, of course! Even if that duty is the worst thing that could happen to sheikh princes who value freedom above life – entering the permanent prison of a marriage of state.

In The Desert Lord’s Bride, Shehab has to secure the throne by marrying a woman he not only despises, but one who has point-blank refused to be the instrument of peace. What else can he do but seduce her into fulfilling her duty?

The three-book THRONE OF JUDAR miniseries is, I hope, the wonderful beginning to my writing for the Desire™ line. I immediately felt at home creating irresistible, larger-than-life heroes who meet their matches and destinies in passionate heroines; they are brought together on tempestuous journeys filled with pleasures and heartaches, until they reach their gloriously satisfying happy ending.

The mini-series began in May with The Desert Lord’s Baby and will conclude in September with The Desert King. I hope you’ll read all three books!

I would love to hear from you, so please contact me at www.oliviagates.com.

Olivia

To my wonderful mother, husband and daughter,

for the support, enthusiasm and inspiration.

To my amazing editor Natashya Wilson,

for always getting the best book out of me.

Can’t do it without you all.

Prologue

It was happening.

And Shehab ben Hareth ben Essam Ed-Deen Aal Masood could still barely believe it.

Ya Ullah. Was he really standing in the middle of the ceremonial hall of the citadel of Bayt el Hekmah—which had witnessed every major royal event for six hundred years from the joyous to the grim—draped in the ceremonial garb he’d never thought he’d ever wear, the black-on-black robes of succession?

Yes. He was really here. So was every member of Judar’s Tribune of Elders, every member of the royal family, every noble house representative, every gaze focused on him.

He blocked out all but his older brother, Farooq, standing right there in his own ceremonial robes, white on white, signifying the transfer of power, his golden eyes flashing his regret, asking understanding.

Shehab squeezed his eyes shut once, acknowledging, everything once again explained and sanctioned through the elemental bond that had bound them since Shehab was born.

Yes. Shehab understood. And accepted. Farooq was only doing this because he had to. Because he knew Shehab was capable of shouldering the burden.

Then Farooq spoke, his voice reverberating in the gigantic hall, fathomless in tone, final in intent. “O’waleek badallan menni.”

I bequeath you the succession in my stead.

Then their uncle, the king, barely upright on the throne with the toll of crises, both physical and political, made the intent a reality, in a voice ravaged by infirmity and deep worry.

“Wa ana ossaddek ala tanseebuk walley aahdi.”

And I validate naming you my heir.

Shehab went down on one knee in front of his older brother, extending both hands, palms up, to accept the bejeweled sword of succession. The moment the heavy weapon rested on his upturned hands, it felt as if he’d just taken the weight of the world there.

And he had. He’d taken on the weight of Judar’s future.

He closed his eyes as the cold steel singed his flesh.

Ya Ullah. It was real.

Days ago he’d been going about his multi-billion-dollar IT business, his contribution to his kingdom being to ensure its avant-garde position in the global technological race. Days ago the throne had been a nonexistent specter with an older heir in his prime preceding him in line to it.

Then came today. Came now.

In place of the freedom to lead his own life, there loomed in his future undreamed-of power. And unspeakable responsibility. All it had taken was ten words.

And now he was Judar’s crown prince. Judar’s future king.

If there remained a Judar to be future king of. If there remained a throne for him to sit on.

Neither was certain any longer.

Not if he didn’t fulfill the terms of the pact demanded by the Aal Shalaans, the second-most powerful tribe of Judar, who formed Judor’s most influential minority.

Not if he didn’t marry a woman he’d never laid eyes on.

One

Hot as hell, cold as the grave.

Shehab’s lips thinned as he recalled the catchphrase, his eyes slicing through the sea of costumed people who impinged on his senses and turned the ballroom into a battleground of material excess and self-serving agendas.

Still no sign of the woman who’d warranted this slogan.

He played it again in his mind, unwillingly finding the rhythm to it, humming it along with the exuberant live orchestral performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9.

Hot as hell, cold as the grave.

One man had even added insatiable as death.

Now that was a summation if he’d ever heard one.

The descriptions sounded like titles. Like the ones he’d been saddled with since birth. Sheikh Aal Masood. His Royal Highness. And now His Majestic Eminence the Crown Prince.

But according to common consensus, hers had been earned.

And he was expected to marry the woman.

No. He wasn’t expected to. He was going to. He had to.

His every muscle clenched. His teeth grated against each other.

Ya Ullah. He should be resigned by now, numbed. It had been over a month since he’d known the fate he had to succumb to, to safeguard Judar’s throne.

At times he could almost hate Carmen.

It was because of Farooq’s overriding love for his wife that he’d thrown the burden in Shehab’s lap.

Still, Shehab could have endured a fate he’d always proclaimed worse than death, an arranged marriage, if the designated bride had been anyone acceptable.

But Farah Beaumont, the illegitimate daughter of King Atef Aal Shalaan, king of Zohayd, wasn’t acceptable.

Not because she’d been born out of wedlock. And not because she’d refused to acknowledge her heritage, or to be the instrument of peace. The first she had no hand in, the second could have been a temporary inability to deal with the revelations about her past, the upheavals it promised in her future.

But neither was why Farah Beaumont—whom her mother had so sneakily given an Arabic name popular in the West— spurned her father and could afford to turn down the prospect of becoming a princess. The real reason was what made her so repulsive.

She’d been born into privilege, having been adopted by the French multimillionaire her mother had married. Then, ever since his fortune had been lost after his death, Farah had been clawing her way back to the top. She’d reached it when she’d become the right hand and mistress of world-shaper Bill Hanson, a married man almost old enough to be her grandfather.

By evidence of her actions and by everyone’s testimony, Farah Beaumont was a cold, promiscuous, seriously twisted woman.

She was also crucial to a whole region’s peace. But she’d refused to do her duty. Point-blank.

Now he had his duty. To pulverize her refusal.

He forced his teeth apart, answered the infringing stare of a couple in Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI costumes.

Instead of deflecting attention by making an appearance as a Kel Tagelmust, a man of the veil, a Tuareg Sahara warrior, Shehab was attracting nothing but. At least he remained anonymous. He couldn’t risk recognition. Hence the masked ball, where he could take the masked part literally.

He exhaled, venting some tension, his breath scorching as it spread behind the indigo cotton veil/turban covering his head and face from mid-nose downward. He pivoted before the couple considered eye-contact permission to approach, only to bump into a leggy Irma La Douce who promptly fluttered her lashes in a way he was only too used to. Before flirtation spilled from her eyes to her lips, he murmured a few gentle words to make it clear he’d appreciate being left alone.

As the prostitute with the heart of gold moseyed on, tossing disappointed looks back at him, he sighed. He hoped to avoid all attention from now on. Although he’d sponsored this affair, he hadn’t invited any of the acquaintances he liked and respected. Instead he had filled the room with people he either barely knew or didn’t care much for, to create an anonymous, easily ignored crowd. He was here to focus on and garner the attention of only one person. Farah Beaumont.

Now if only the damned woman would make an appearance.

Suddenly, something sizzled at the back of his neck.

Tensing, he homed in on the source of the disturbance. It was emanating from the giant ballroom doors ten feet away. He turned, imbuing his movement with unconcern.

In the next second, everything lost momentum. His body. His heart. The world itself decelerated before it vanished. Nothing remained but the creature framed in the intricately gilded doorway, swathed in an ethereal gown made of every shade of green right out of his kingdom’s fairy tales. The subject of a fantasy painting come to life.

This was…her?

He blinked, as if coming out of hypnosis.

What was he thinking? Of course it was her. He’d had enough close-ups of her pinned on his wall as he’d prepared for this campaign. Pictures that included several of her wrapped around her sugar daddy, flaunting the nature of their relationship. He knew how she looked, down to the last detail.

Or so he’d thought. Her flesh-and-blood reality far transcended the composite image her photos had created.

None had come close to translating the hundred shades that spun the bronze silk of her hair. None had been faithful to the richness of the thick cream that was her skin. None had hinted at the hue and depth of her eyes. In the most revealing close-ups they’d been a mundane green. But even at this distance, they rivaled the summer meadows and emerald shores of his island put together. And her tailored features echoed no one’s, her air implied an individuality so unique that must be encoded in her very genes.

Her photos had misconstrued a combination that he could only describe as…breathtaking.

He blinked again. What are you thinking, you fool? She is a self-serving, gold-digging creature inhabiting a siren’s body. A body she sells to the highest, most undemanding bidder.

He gave himself a further mental shake as he watched her proceed across the ballroom, turning every head but noticing no one herself.

Yes, there it was, the famed frost.

Yet…maybe not.

It wasn’t haughtiness he detected, the despising of all else who lived. It was something he recognized only too well. The bone-deep wish for solitude, the elemental drive to avoid crowds, loathing to be the center of attention yet knowing he was forever doomed to be in it….

There he went again! Assigning not only human traits to the woman who thought nothing of standing aside as a prosperous kingdom descended into chaos, but deeply personal ones, too.

Enough. Time to put things in motion. This was going to be hard and ugly and, if he found no way out, permanent. No reason to draw out the preliminary discomfort.

He signaled to his waiters.

He moved to intercept her, his steps long and leisurely, their steady momentum detailing his intention to bypass her on the way to the French windows leading out onto the terrace.

Five paces from their intersection point, he cast his gaze in a sweeping motion, not intending it to pause on her. The next moment his intentions scattered, along with his ordered thoughts, as his gaze locked on to hers with all the greed and willfulness of everything male in him.

E’lal jaheem. To hell with this. What was he doing deviating from the set plan?

His eyes clung to hers, disregarding his fury at the unprecedented loss of control. Then, at the height of his frustration, he saw it. Reflected in the depths of her gemlike eyes.

Awareness. Startled, rivaling his own, surpassing it for being taken unawares.

The coolness of satisfaction spread behind his sternum.

So—the Ice Queen wasn’t immune to him, eh?

With her reputation, he’d been worried she’d be the exception, forcing him to exert himself to catch and keep her attention. It seemed she just hadn’t met a man who warranted it.

But she’d met him now.

So maybe she’d relent if she found out he was her intended groom, that she’d exchange one billionaire tycoon for another who could more than give her what she needed in bed, things her aging lover surely wasn’t providing her with…

What was he thinking? No matter how magnificent she was as a female, she was immoral, heartless. He would never keep her in his bed longer than it took for her to conceive the vital heir.

Based on all he knew of her, he assumed that one factor in her adamant refusal to change her current situation was that she had no desire to lose the freedom of being in control of an older man without giving anything back, giving nothing up. Entering a marriage of state, where she’d be forever monitored and unable to mess around as she no doubt did now, must be unthinkable to her. A man in his prime, who’d keep her toeing the line and in his bed, was certainly to be avoided at all costs.

No. Disclosing his true identity to someone who was as ruthless a businesswoman as he was a businessman would only backfire.

His original plan was the only way to go.

His eyes had remained glued to hers all through his inner deliberations. Voluntarily, he insisted on telling himself, to ascertain her reaction to him.

And he was certain now. He’d never seen such a blatant confession of instant hunger in a woman’s eyes. He struggled not to acknowledge the flare of equal hunger in his gut, to keep all turmoil from his eyes. Smugness, hot and triumphant, surged as she faltered to a standstill under the brunt of his approach.

Then his two accomplices collided into them.

Farah Beaumont had been roasting with mortification.

Every eye in the packed, suffocatingly opulent ballroom had turned at her entrance, the whispers rising over the orchestral music like the hissing of a thousand cobras.

Which wasn’t an exaggeration, really. She felt as if she’d just stepped into a pit of snakes. But then, she’d invited their poison when she’d agreed to pose as Bill’s lover. Sometimes their purposes in setting up this charade didn’t seem worth the malice she met everywhere. Only sometimes, though. She’d found peace since Bill had become her shield and she’d become his payback to his cheating wife. Her predators were now the gossiping, backstabbing kind. The seducing, exploiting kind usually kept their distance, where she wanted them to remain. Where she hoped they’d remain tonight, now that she was here alone.

Damn Bill for insisting she arrive at this balle-masqué-cum-fund-raiser farce ahead of him. As if he could resolve the out-of-the-blue catastrophe that had sent their current multi-billion-dollar deal back to square one in time to catch up with her.

But he’d thought it imperative she make an appearance as his representative. God forbid their host—a Middle Eastern magnate who’d sprung out of the shrouds of mystery just a month ago, exploding onto the world-finance scene a fully fledged global player—would feel slighted that a fellow tycoon hadn’t graced his self-congratulatory function. Or sent a proxy. It just wasn’t done, one world-mover to another. And then, Bill was dying to meet the guy. He was convinced the mystery mogul would make an appearance this time.

She thought he wouldn’t. He’d been manipulating the media and the highest circles of finance like a master puppeteer. He was still brewing maneuvers that would change the course of whole regions’ economies. She figured he’d reveal himself only when he’d achieved his full plan. Maybe not even then.

Wise man. Got his head screwed on right. Who in their right mind with that kind of power would squander the blessing of anonymity? What kind of sick psyche wanted the exposure?

She winced. She had to ask that, here, in the presence of about two thousand such psyches?

It could still have been endurable—come here, meet the guy, convey Bill’s excuses—if Bill hadn’t insisted she dress up in this stupid costume.

The image reflected at her after she’d wrestled it on had made her burst out laughing. For someone who felt clumsy in anything but casual pants and flats, a Scheherazade costume was a woefully hilarious misrepresentation. But Bill had really wanted to make an entrance with her, flaunt her to maximum effect.

Then, as she’d taken the first steps into that sea of malicious speculation, wishing the floor would snap open and snatch her into its maw, a pair of lasers had slammed into her.

OK. Exaggeration alert. The so-called lasers were just eyes. A man’s obsidian eyes.

But, no. Lasers weren’t an exaggeration. Rather an understatement. She did feel as if they were burning her from the eyes inward… Whoa. Look away, moron.

She couldn’t. Couldn’t break away from the thrall of those eyes to look at their owner. All she registered beyond the black-on-white gaze were impressions of toughness, power, size…and sheer unadulterated maleness.

Her body heat rose, fueled by the frantic engine that had replaced her heart behind her ribs.

For God’s sake! She didn’t do burning up and instant paralysis. And never, ever, instant X-rated thoughts.

Tell that to her malfunctioning volition and heat-regulating centers. Not to mention her short-circuiting imagination. That became crowded with images of hard virility pressing down on her, of hot breath singeing her lips, her neck, lower…

Her muscles twitched, sweat broke out on her palms and feet, trickling between her breasts…

Suddenly something slammed into her right shoulder. Then far more than a trickle of liquid was gushing, everywhere.

Chilled shock doused her, freeing her from the man’s eyes. Her own flew wide to watch the chain-reaction she’d triggered.

Her sudden halt right in his path had brought him to an abrupt stop, too. And two waiters with trayfuls of champagne had crashed right into them.

She watched in petrified horror as dozens of flutes spilled all over him, felt the echoing scenario all over her, each hit of cold liquid knocking the breath out of her. Then the flutes succumbed to the pull of gravity and hurtling to the floor.

The music swelled, obscuring the medley of smashing crystal as a lull gripped their immediate crowd, that sick fascination with others’ humiliation that never ceased to baffle her. The last flute shattered melodically on the glossy parquet floor among the last chords of the concerto.

In the post-finale hush, there was an outburst of apologies from the waiters, of inquiries from bystanders as a dozen hands dabbed at her clothes.

Disoriented at having so many people encroaching on her, her voice rose. “It’s OK…thanks…just…thank you.”

Her words had no effect as six men, the waiters among them, crowded her, insisting on imposing their help on her. She felt her anti-crowd discomfort rising, taking on a phobic edge. She turned to the one presence that wasn’t invading her personal space. The man. This time the burning of his gaze was welcome, a refuge.

Understanding her unspoken appeal, he put himself between her and her harassing helpers, cut them off from her with the impressive barrier of his sand-gold-clad body, an imperial flick of his hand sending them scattering from her field of vision. Then he turned to her.

She averted her eyes this time, feeling the heat that had been doused by shock and champagne surging up to her face again.

She’d better not be blushing. She couldn’t be blushing. She hadn’t blushed since she was sixteen.

But the sizzling was unmistakable. She was blushing.

Just great. This man was resurrecting every clumsy foolishness she’d thought buried along with her father…who’d turned out to be not her real father. Not that biology mattered to her. Francois Beaumont would always remain her father in every way that mattered. And his death over a decade ago had forced her to mature overnight….

Oh, whom was she kidding? She’d matured in certain areas only, had become an expert in erecting barriers and bulldozing her way through the confrontations that made up social life, using her blunted social skills as a weapon.

Now no barrier or battering ram would do, and here she was, soaked, blushing and feeling terminally silly.

As if in answer to her distress again, the man handed her napkins, shielded her from prying eyes as she dried herself, echoing her actions, his movements slower, more efficient.

When he judged she’d done all she could, he retrieved the napkins from her numb fingers, piled them on the trays of the still-apologizing waiters. Then he motioned to her, a graceful gesture that was a cross between command and courtesy, spreading his abaya’s sleeve like the wing of a great vulture, signaling for her to precede him in the direction he’d been heading when she’d caused the indoor champagne shower.

She didn’t need a second bidding, streaked to the open French windows.

As they stepped out into the night, the first solo violin strings of a poignant composition she didn’t recognize flowed, as if scoring their progress across the gigantic terrace. Lost in the surreal movielike moment, she breathed in relief. She’d made it outside without snagging those damned spiked heels into that double-damned layered skirt and falling flat on her face.

She felt him two steps behind her, his aura magnified now that others weren’t diluting it, felt dwarfed, inundated. She looked around, anywhere but at him, not really seeing the landscaped grounds that sprawled into the moonlit horizon.

Feeling like a ten-year-old who’d just made an irrevocable fool of herself in front of the one person she wanted to make an impression on, she tucked champagne-drenched tendrils behind her ear and blurted out, “Well, that was sure needed.”

A smile soaked his fathomless tones as they rode the sultry California summer breeze, a bit muffled behind his intimidating, incredibly exciting veil. “The fresh evening air? The escape from oversolicitous admirers and pawing champagne blotters?”

British. His accent. Highly educated, deeply cultured, laden with class and control. And with an inflection that told her he wasn’t actually English, but something too complex to fathom. He sounded exactly as he looked. Exotic, superior, formidable.

Not that she knew how he looked. After the stolen glimpse at his costume—that of someone ready to tackle a sandstorm head-on— she hadn’t ventured another look at him. Couldn’t work up the nerve to take that look. Probably would only when he decided she’d taken enough of his party time and went back to his companion.

He just had to have a companion. Men like him—assuming other men like him existed—were invariably spoken for. And this one wouldn’t merely be spoken for. He’d be fought over, tooth and nail.

She sighed. “Actually, I meant the champagne shower.”

Hell. And he’d know she wasn’t even joking. She should just shut up until he moved on. She’d do well to remember she was an outcast for a reason. She’d never developed the art of conversation. Or the common sense of social graces. Every time she hurled out what she was thinking, uncensored, she varied between cultivating disgruntled critics or outright enemies.

Not that she was cultivating either here. The man must simply think her a total moron by now. Oh, well.

Turning her back on him, she flopped her purse over her back, raised her multilayered skirt, wrung its ends, took off one soggy shoe, then the other and dangled each over the marble balustrade, watering the shrubs with excess champagne before placing the shoes facedown to drain.

So what if she was confirming his suspicion that he’d just stumbled on the party clown? What did his opinion matter, anyway?

Suddenly, nothing seemed to matter as dark rumbles rose, harmonizing with a cello solo, both male and instrumental music enveloping her in a surge of warmth and…well being?

Oh, wow. He was laughing. And not at her. With her. She could tell by the answering exuberance rising inside her.

She felt him leaning against the balustrade, looking down at her, and she shivered at the amusement still staining his voice. “So—you welcomed the cooling off, even at the price of braving the rest of the ball wet and sticky, in a ruined gown and barefoot?”

Her lips twisted in self-deprecation. “With the way I was sweating, this was my fate anyway. I was already squishing in my shoes. It was a relief to fast-forward to the inevitable end.”

“May I inquire why such a cool-looking butterfly was sweating buckets in the perfectly air-conditioned ballroom?”

Butterfly? At five-foot-six and a hundred and forty pounds, she was too substantial to be called that. And cool-looking? Was he baiting her? Trying to get her to admit why she’d been so hot and bothered? As if she’d tell him!

Then she opened her mouth. “Are you a different species? Perfectly air-conditioned? Not according to this body’s thermostat. I entered that ballroom and almost got knocked off my feet by thousands of people emitting the steam of body heat and self-importance, then you trained those eyes on me and I just about spontaneously combusted…”

Shut up. Just shut up.

This was far worse than her usual candor crises. This man disturbed her. Unbalanced her. Big time. But there was no use feeling bad about it now. The damage had already been done.

She gritted her teeth and waited for his response, expecting him to burst out laughing for real this time. Or to take advantage of her confession and proposition her.

“So that was why you welcomed the cold shower!” Here it came. The making fun of her. The lewd proposition. Or both. “Thank you.”

Wha…? Thank you? What the hell was he thanking her for? The ego stroke? The comic relief?

Her chagrin evaporated as he went on, something that was no longer amusement—wonder?—coloring his magnificent voice. “Thank you for giving me the opening to let you know how you tampered with my temperature the moment you trained these eyes on me.”

He touched her then, a thumb tracing a burning, downcast lid then a forefinger below her chin, coaxing her face up. She trembled at the barely substantial contact.

Then he exhaled a gravelly, “Do it again.”

His invocation raised her eyes to his without volition. And the impact was even harder this time. In the full moon’s rays, the whites of his eyes shone silver, the irises infinite by contrast, a black hole sucking her whole into it.

Then he began unraveling the intricately folded cloth that obscured his face in slow, hypnotic movements. At last he stopped, dropped his arms to his sides and whispered, sounding as disturbed as she felt, “Look at me. All of me.”

His command/plea shattered the spell that had been keeping her eyes captive to his, and she obeyed, letting her gaze stumble all over him, absorbing everything about him with the same greed her gown had soaked up the champagne.

And he was magnificent.

But…no. He was more than that.

Long ago, when she’d believed she’d one day find love and passion with one person who’d been made for her and she for him, she’d had a vague, impossible vision of that person. This man surpassed even that spawn of an outlandish teenage imagination.

Tall, dark and handsome were givens. The devil was definitely in the details here. How tall, for instance—ten or more inches taller than her. And though his getup only hinted at his body’s power, she’d bet he’d fill out a superhero’s suit to perfection. Then came the part of just how handsome he was.

She’d never had a knack for poetry or art. She was all about numbers and spreadsheets and harsh financial facts. But she could see how a face like that deserved sonnets. And a wingful of portraits in a museum. His perfect face proved that asymmetrical, weathered faces didn’t have a monopoly on character.

But what was really unfair was that his attraction went far beyond the physical. The way his gorgeous eyes spoke, communicated, the command he had over his every move and intonation, the influence he’d displayed on others, herself foremost among them. This was a man who had mental faculties as razor-sharp as his cheekbones.

OK. Something was officially wrong with her.

Was it possible she’d absorbed the dozen glasses of champagne subdermally? She’d gotten drunk once. She’d had an unstoppable urge to blurt out the truth unprovoked then, too.

She succumbed to the urge now. “God, you’re beautiful!”

She winced, bit her lip. But it was out. All she could do now was wait for him to shake his head and turn away, to burst into belated laughter or to finally pick up the invitation he must by now believe she was blatantly issuing.

When none of her predictions came true as his scrutiny stretched, she finally snapped, “Take your cue from me, will you? Just spit out whatever you’re thinking, then be on your way.”

Shehab stared at her. This was completely unexpected.

She was…an absolute surprise. A shock.

The woman the reports and pictures had painted in such clear and cruel detail was nowhere to be found. This woman decimated their assertions and his preconceptions with every move she made, every word she uttered. Her very vibe transmitted a totally alien entity to the one he’d thought he’d have to contend with.

Or she could be the world’s best actress.

Not that it mattered what she was.

Whether she was demon or angel or anything in between, his mission remained unchanged.

But something else had changed.

Until he’d laid eyes on her, he’d been sick with projecting the various forms of revulsion he’d have to endure on this quest. He’d consoled himself that the throne of Judar was worth his very life and more, not only his freedom.

But now what he’d thought would be an abhorrent duty was looking more and more as though it was going to be a decadent indulgence. Now he couldn’t wait to give his all to her seduction.

And entrapment.

Two

She was getting away.

He’d gaped at her too long and she’d gotten fed up. Or angry. With what sounded like a curse, she reached for her shoes, gathered up her skirt and hopped on one foot to put one shoe on. The moment she had the other on, he knew she’d run away.

He moved into her path, his hands taking hers at the wrists in a clasp that was more pantomime than actual grasp.

He extracted the shoe from her unresisting fingers and her supple arm fell to her side. Then, holding her gaze, he went down in front of her, slow, measured, his hand guiding the hand bunching her skirt in the opposite direction to his descent, in a movement just as leisurely, scraping her leg with the rich layers of tulle and chiffon up to her mid-thigh.

Her knees gave a momentary buckle. With another almost-touch, he eased her back against the balustrade. Only then did he break their eye-lock, let his gaze drift down. His fingers followed, hovering an agonizingly unhurried path over the firm cream of her thigh and leg. Once he reached her bare foot, his fingers paused for a long moment. Then they closed on it.

She gasped a hot, sharp sound, jerked, her toes curling.

Someone in the background gave a lewd hoot. He barely registered it. All he could focus on was her labored breathing, his, drowning out the din drifting from the ballroom. He bit his lip to stem the rising stimulation, savoring the first real touch, marveling at the delicacy in her foot’s every line, the strength in every bone. She really was exquisite down to her toes.

He traced each one down to her neat, unpainted toenails, then gave her leg a coaxing push, bent her knee, brought her foot up until its arch rested on his shoulder. She was shaking now, each tremor flowing to his frame through the contact.

From this position, kneeling in front of her, feeling her flailing in his power, he decided it was time to answer her.

“You want to know what I was thinking?” He marveled at the ragged edge lacing his words. A convincing simulation of stirred sincerity. He wasn’t sure what it was. Excitement? Exhilaration? Arousal? Probably all three. “I was thinking it was you who the word beautiful has been coined for. I was thinking that you must be a different species, that you put me to shame.”

“I do?” she croaked. Then she jerked. “Listen, I—I said some embarrassing stuff…more so than the gems that usually dribble from my big mouth. So…sorry, OK? Just forget them and…” The rest was muffled as she tried to extract her foot from his grip.

He only slid her foot down to his heart level, pressed it there, so lightly he let her know she could escape if she wanted, let her know she couldn’t. “Don’t apologize. Never apologize. You misunderstand me. You put me to shame with your candor. And then, how could I forget what you said? When I never want to? I never met a woman, or anyone for that matter, who was anywhere near this delightfully plainspoken.”

“Delightfully? Don’t you mean painfully? At least, it’s painful for me…or more so for me, this time…”

He’d never seen emotions so visibly invading a skin so perfect before. His gaze clung to the progression of her blush, watched the stain of stimulation spreading, taking on a mystical tint in the moonlight. His own blood rushed to his head, to his loins. He raised her clammy foot, dueled with the urge to kiss it, to suckle her toes. An urge he’d never imagined before. He clamped down on it, settled for fitting her shoe back on, a tremor invading his fingers as he slipped her supple foot into the emerald satin-covered creation. It had to be the control he was exerting, so he wouldn’t obey his instincts’ insistence that he heave up and crush this exquisite female in his arms.

He settled for a whispered lip brush on the inside of her calf, then, with a pang of regret, he let her skirt fall over her creamy flesh, and placed her foot down on the ground. “Why should it pain you, my Cinderella? Doing me such a favor?”

She teetered, grasped her support harder. “Favor?”

He rose slowly, drawing out the moment, the movement, both more potent for his letting her sense his leashed desire without touching her. “A huge one. The moment I laid eyes on you, I wondered how I’d approach you without seeming predatory. Afterward, I wondered if it was wise to tell you how I welcomed the dousing and the chance it gave me to be with you. I went through a list of roundabout ways to tell you what you make me feel without offending you or scaring you off. And here you are, showing me that no maneuvers are needed. Not when what we feel is mutual.”

She shook her head as if to clear it. “It is? But—but I don’t even know how I feel.”

He touched a heavy lock of wet bronze silk, oh so close to her breast. “Why don’t you describe it to me?”

She pressed against the balustrade, to escape his influence, her desire to press into him instead. He knew it. “I—I already told you…you make me feel confused and clumsy…”

“And hot,” he finished, elation rising higher.

“Yeah, that, too…” She stopped, groaned. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this…apart from the fact that I have this mind-to-mouth incontinence disease…when it’s not business stuff…” She paused, seemed to struggle for breath, then burst out again. “This is ridiculous. This has to be the full moon…or the champagne. I’m not this socially handicapped.”

He leaned closer, pressing his advantage. “This is not social. This is you and me. The moon has nothing to do with the magic brewing between us. It’s only shedding a stronger light on it. The champagne, we only bathed in.”

“Yeah. Maybe it’s champagne-fumes intoxication?”

He had to chuckle. He wanted to remain intense and focused, but everything she said stimulated his humor as much as his libido. “Intoxication is right. You’re just looking for a far-fetched reason when you’re right here, a vision from a fairy tale who keeps blurting out the most amazing things.”

“A vision? Sure. The word you’re looking for is a sight.”

And the amazing thing was, he felt she wasn’t fishing, that her comment carried conviction. And consternation.

He insisted, his voice lowering, roughening, praise coming easy, flowing true. “A vision. So much more potent for being real. And you think the same about me.”

She nodded, without hesitation. Then her eyes squeezed and she groaned again. Was it possible this persona, the one who seemed devoid of even an ounce of feminine wiles, was real?

She echoed his skepticism. “But how can any of this be real? What is this, anyway?”

“You know what this is. Something you thought you’d never experience. Something I certainly didn’t believe even existed. Instant attraction. Total and brutal.”

Her eyes filled with concession, with bewilderment, as the music built to climactic heights, as if underscoring his assertion, a manifestation of the charge building between them.

Suddenly her wavering gaze wrenched from his.

He dragged it back with a touch brooking no resistance. She wasn’t dismissing him like she had the fates of two kingdoms.

He closed the remaining inches between them until he was a breath away from imprinting himself all over her. The music rose to a crescendo, then held its breath. He pressed his point home. “Don’t try to escape the truth. Acknowledge it.”

“How can I? W-we don’t even know each other’s names.”

The music came to a dramatic end, as if punctuating her gasped protest. So…she’d introduced the subject of exchanging personal details. Good. It was time he introduced her to the alter ego he’d created in the past month for this purpose.

“That’s easily fixed.” He reached for her right hand, so soft and pliant and sweaty, took it to his lips. “My name is Shehab Aal Ajman.” He pressed a hot kiss in the middle of her palm. “Now all you have to do to meet your condition for sanctioning our attraction is to tell me yours, ya jameelati.”

Her eyes widened as she snatched her hand away, fisted it as if it itched, burned. “Is that Arabic?”

“It is…my beauty.”

“Oh—oh…oh.” Her faltering eyes widened. “You’re him? Sheikh Shehab Aal Ajman? But you can’t be!”

“I assure you, I can.” His lips spread in satisfaction. “So you know of me. How’s that for proof that this is fate at work?”

* * *

Realizations piled up in Farah’s mind. But stunned or not, his last statement incited her enough to contradict it.

“Oh, no. Fate’s got nothing to do with it. How could I not know of the venture capitalist who’s been rocking the financial world? In my line of work I know of anyone who’s making or has the potential of making waves. And you’ve been making tsunamis.” She exhaled her still-climbing incredulity. “Excuse me as I struggle with my misconceptions. I had this image in my head, and it seems hilarious now side-by-side with the truth…your truth.”

“And what was that image that my name and reputation summoned to your imagination?”

“A repulsive blob in traditional Bedouin garb, with a high nasal voice and a painful accent, reeking of musk and…”

Somebody gag and sedate her already.

God. What she’d give to rewind and replay their whole meeting. Not that it would turn out any better. Not without her borrowing someone else’s personality along with the gown.

But wonder of wonders, instead of looking affronted, Shehab—whose name now summoned only heated visions of virility and sweeping strength—seemed even more amused. “You mentioned a line of work. You actually work?”

She raised one eyebrow, hackles priming to rise. “Yeah, I work. In fact, I don’t do much besides work. And the reason behind the condescending disbelief would be?”

“Looking at you in this gown fit for the head concubine in a sultan’s harem, my Scheherazade, it’s hard to believe you’re anything but some blessed man’s pampered possession.”

Chagrin shot up inside her. Just as she was about to spit out an obliterating comeback, she realized what he was doing.

“Oh…you’re…Oh! OK…touché,” she mumbled. “I deserved that.”

His smile became all indulgence. “Yes, you did.” He wound a lock of her hair around his forefinger. “So what is this work that’s taken over such a vibrant siren’s life?”

She pretended to look around, her heart skipping. “Siren? Where? Me? Man, this gown is really projecting a false image.” She huffed in irony. “Far from being a siren as the costume suggests—and it was imposed on me, by the way—I have what has to be the world’s most un-sirenlike job. I’m head financial advisor for Bill Hanson of Global View Finance.”

His eyebrows lifted slightly. Was he impressed? Not? What?

His comment didn’t even hint at his opinion. “Sounds as if you find the position…lacking. Why do it then?”

She shrugged. “I know nothing else. My father—uh, adoptive father, as I lately discovered—inhabited the world of high finance, and he raised and bred me to live there. After he died, it was even more imperative that I walk in his footsteps. But by the time I was old enough to take over his business, there was nothing left. So I’m lucky to have landed such a position. I never thought about whether it appeals to me or not. I just do the best job I possibly can.”

Something fired in his eyes. It was gone in seconds, but it made her rush to add, “Listen…about those things I said a minute ago. That was one piece of prejudiced garbage. So, I’m sorry, not only for harboring it, but for actually voicing it—”

His hand rose in a silencing gesture, before he turned it, swept the back of his fingers sensuously across her lips. “What have I told you about apologizing? Never ever, ya helweti.”

She squinted down at the hand feathering her flesh, the perfection of long, strong fingers encased in taut bronze, adorned with just the right amount and pattern of silky black hair. Her mind crowded with images of nuzzling those fingers, suckling them. And as if his touch wasn’t enough, there were the foreign words he kept scalding her with, the way the mobile sculpture of his lips embraced them, the way his awesome voice caressed them…

Her blood tumbled in a spin cycle. “Another endearment?”

Great. She sounded like a fish thrashing out of its bowl. Probably looked it, too.

He gave a nod, deceptively lazy, laden with so much heat and temptation. “My sweet. And you are, so unbelievably sweet, every word you say, everything you do. I can’t wait to find out if your sweetness runs through and through.” He suddenly stood straighter, obliterated the breath between them, let her feel him, if only in whisper touches along all of her. It felt as if his magnetic field was all that kept her upright. “But you haven’t told me your name yet. I need to know it. I need to murmur it against your lips, against every inch of you, taste it with your nectar, get high on it as I do on you. Tell me.”

She tried to find her voice, her name, but couldn’t. She was being swept away, the shores of reason receding. She saw nothing but his eyes, his lips, wanted nothing but for them to fulfill his promise, taste her, possess her, devour her.

But he was waiting, insisting on finding out her name, as per her idiotic objection, before he acted on his promises.

Just tell him. She did, gasped it, “Farah…”

His sharp intake of breath felt as if it tore into her own lungs, flooding her with his scent. “Farah. An Arabic name. This is fate. And your parents knew just what you’d be. Joy.”

She’d always smirked at the meaning of her name. Apart from the sporadic times of contentment in the company of her ultra-busy father, she’d never experienced anything approaching joy.

She gave a laugh, shaky, self-deprecating. “Not according to my mother. I certainly haven’t been her joy.”

“Of course you were. How could you not be?”

“And to answer that, I’ll have to refer you to her.”

His frown was spectacular. “She actually told you that you are not the joy of her life? What mother says that to her child?”

“A mother who turned out to have lived a much more complicated life than I dreamed possible. I guess I was the reminder of my real father. Not a source of happy thoughts.”

He cupped her cheek. Was his hand on fire? She pressed into his palm, wanting to burn. His hand pressed back before going to her nape, tilting up her head. “She had no right to taint your life, to let her emotions for you be polluted by her bitterness against your biological father.”

She pressed her head harder into his assuagement. “Oh, she never said anything like that. It’s my own conclusion. You see, she’s always been morose, withdrawn. She does everything right, but it’s all…held back, as if she’s going through a chore, finding no…joy—there’s that word again—in it. When I learned about my real father, it made sense. She loved him beyond reason it seems, and was never the same after losing him.”

A long moment passed as he stared at her, his face a blank mask. At last he exhaled. “So you don’t feel bitter toward her? Or toward your real father for scarring her, making her less than the perfectly loving mother that you deserved?”

“I don’t do bitterness. What does it serve?”

“Indeed. So, not only a siren, but a deeply sane one, too.”

She coughed a laugh. Sane? Not that she’d noticed since she’d laid eyes on him.

“Is your real father alive? Do you now know who he is?”

“Yeah, to both questions. I found out over a month ago. And let me tell you, it’s been one hell of a roller-coaster ride.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“Uh…I’d appreciate it if we change the subject. It ranks right up there with tearing my skin on barbed wire.” And she wasn’t exaggerating. If anything, she was understating how discovering her real parentage had left her feeling. Her world had blown apart when her mother had dropped the bomb that Francois Beaumont wasn’t her father—that some Middle Eastern monarch was. Then her newfound father, King Atef of Zohayd, had overwhelmed her with his happiness at finding her, his eagerness to know her— his long-lost daughter. And she’d found herself responding, liking him, waiting with baited breath for his next call or message. She’d worried about her eager reaction, wondering if she was desperate for a new father figure to fill the gaping void her adoptive father’s death had left inside her. But King Atef had swept her up in his excitement, soothing her worry that she was betraying her dad’s memory by being so happy to find another father. Then he’d come to meet her and had dropped another bomb. He needed her to marry some prince from a neighboring kingdom as part of a political pact.

And she’d realized that it had been another setup. Another lie. He was just another man pretending emotions he didn’t feel, saying whatever it took to get her to go along with his self-serving plans. She’d shut him and his protestations of sincerity out, kept hoping he’d find another easy way to put his pact through so he’d stop badgering her, so he’d forget she existed….

Shehab trailed a forefinger along her forearm, jogging her out of her oppressive musings before tears of letdown and heartache and guilt spilled from her eyes again.

“It hurt that much?”

“Actually, tearing my skin didn’t hurt that much.”

His eyes flared. “How? When?”

Her bones rattled with the blast of response to his intensity. “You mean the wound? Uh, I was trying to sneak under a fence on one of my father’s ranches and got caught on the barbed wire. I was eleven.”

“Where?”

“O-on my back…” She barely held back the rest, the other wound she’d sustained on her left buttock when she’d panicked and struggled to free herself.

“Show me.”

It wasn’t a request. It was a demand. A demand she didn’t even think of denying. She could only close her eyes, turn.

And his hands were on her. Spanning her waist, removing the cascade of her hair, exposing the dipping back of her dress.

His hands skimmed her skin as he searched for the healed evidence of her injury. She stood mute, unable to tell him he wouldn’t find it there. He didn’t need to be told. He eased her zipper down, the sound, the idea of what he was doing, what she was letting happen, almost making her keel over.

He traced warm, knowing fingers down her spine until they met the slightly raised scar above her tailbone. She keeled over then, over the balustrade, swamped in sensation. He traced its outline, and the tissue that alternated between numbness and aching fired with stimulation. Each caress sent lightning forking throughout her body, lodging in her nipples and core.

“Does it still hurt?” His fingers traveled up and down to the rhythm of his words, yanking the direction of the electric current lancing through her back and forth until she almost collapsed. She could only shake her head. Shake, period.

“Tell me you never hurt yourself again.” His palm splayed over her scar in a gesture rich with something far more disturbing than lust. Concern, protection. What she’d never felt from anyone but her father and Bill. And to feel it from him…

She shook her head again, heard a satisfied rumble deep in his chest before he ended his torture, pulled the zipper up. Then he clamped her waist again, turned her to him, bore down on her with his aura and hunger.

And she couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Had to be totally still, to watch him do it, take the first taste of her.

But he didn’t do it. His lips descended only to whisper against her burning cheek, “Ya ajmal makhloogah ra’ayta’ha, the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen, dance with me.”

Dance? Dance? That was all he wanted?

But she wanted more. He’d been right. She’d never imagined she could feel anything like this. Hunger that rocked her, frightened her, made her crave things from him she’d never wanted from another man. Things she’d hated from other men.

But he was only drawing her into a loose embrace, leading her into the first languid steps of a waltz. Maddening her with enough contact to inflame her more, but not enough to blunt the talons of need that sank deeper into her flesh with every move.

To her surprise, she felt her feet flowing into steps learned during her days as her father’s favorite dance partner. Then the rest of her body followed, as one with the rhythm, with his every move, with him. She felt grace and power pulsing in her arms as she wound them around his steel bulk, securing him to her. She had a feeling it would all end when the dance was over. She was taking all she could…now.

At one point, Shehab groaned against her temple, “You are the meaning of your name. This would be how a hooreyah, one of the inhabitants of heaven who brings total joy, would feel in my arms…” He pressed her harder to his length. “But, no. If those creatures do exist, they’d be nothing to you. With you, it’s like dancing with bliss, with passion made human.”

Laughter flowed from her, unfettered, delirious. She didn’t believe any of those things applied to her, but it seemed he believed they did. Why not, when she believed the same about him? This had to be what he’d said it was. Magic. And she wouldn’t think how or why. She’d just wallow in it.

Somewhere in her hazy mind she realized the music had ended, another piece had started and they were no longer dancing. He was leading her down the wide marble steps to the gardens. And she was following him, still laughing, ready for anything. She felt like someone coming out of stasis and now rushing toward the first moments of life.

He took her behind obscuring trees, pressed her against a smooth trunk, then took her face in both hands. In a rogue moonbeam slashing among the foliage, his face and obsidian gaze were supernatural in beauty, in impact. She felt penetrated, the notion of spontaneous combustion no longer such an impossibility anymore.

Just as she thought she’d crumble to his feet in ashes she cried out, “Shehab…”

He swallowed his name, growled hers inside her. “Farah…”

And it was like opening a floodgate. She’d thought nothing could be better than his feel and scent. His taste was. She wanted to drown in it. She was drowning. In kisses that gave her glimpses of the ferocity she needed from him. His hands joined in her torment, gliding all over her, never pausing long enough to appease, until she writhed against him, whimpering, begging, not really knowing what she was begging for, “Shehab…please…”

His lips clamped down on hers then, moist, branding, his tongue thrusting deep, singeing her with pleasure, breaching her with need, draining her of moans and reason.

She took it all, not knowing what to do to pleasure him in turn. It was just so…so…everything. Pressure built, in her eyes, chest, loins. Her hands convulsed on his arms until he relented, lowered her zipper, pushed her gown and purse strap from her shoulders, setting her swollen breasts free.

She keened. With relief, with the spike in arousal. He had her exposed, vulnerable. Maddened. “Please…”

Her hands pressed her breasts together to mitigate their aching as everything inside her surged, gushed, needing anything…anything he would do to her. His fingers and tongue and teeth exploiting her every secret, his body all over hers, his manhood filling the void between her thighs, thrusting her to oblivion…

Oh, God. What was she thinking?

She wanted him to do all that to her? There? Then?

What was wrong with her?

Then revelation came. Nothing was wrong with her.

Something…everything…was finally right.

This was all wrong.

He was supposed to be the one performing the seduction.

He was always the one in control, easily taking what was on offer or leaving it, his libido never in the driver’s seat.

No woman had ever had him a breath away from insanity.

But as his eyes glazed over kiss-swollen lips and glistening eyes, over the perfection of full breasts pressed together in a mind-blowing offering, he couldn’t remember how this had started, or why he shouldn’t take what his body was bellowing for, come what may.

He’d been wrong about her. This unpredictable enchantress was nothing like the hardened vixen he’d expected.

And she was infinitely more dangerous for it.

And it didn’t matter to him. Nothing did. Not her crimes or that she was another man’s mistress, who, an hour after meeting him, was begging him to do anything and everything to her. It only inflamed him more, the force of her equal hunger…

No. No. He couldn’t give her what she wanted that easily.

If he did, he’d be a one-night stand to her. A steady supply of those had to be how she filled her insatiable sexual needs. Although she’d been discreet, no doubt fearing her lover’s wrath. His reports on her hadn’t included any known liaisons.

But she was pressing into him, all that glorious passion and flesh. He could smell her arousal, feel it vibrating in his loins, hear it thundering in his cells. Surely this much hunger wouldn’t be satisfied with one frenzied mating. He could take her now and it would only start her addiction, as he’d planned…

No. He couldn’t risk it. He had to stop. Even if he wasn’t sure his potency would survive the blow.

“Farah, wait.” She didn’t heed him, her lips at his pulse wringing coherence from his body. He tried again, his voice a gruff groan he didn’t recognize. “We have to stop…”

And again her reaction was nothing he could have predicted. It was as if he’d shot her. She jackknifed away, stumbling as she fumbled to pull up her gown and purse, emotions slashing across her face. Shock, frustration, embarrassment. It was the distress that disturbed him. A distress she must surely be feigning.

Before he could say anything she rasped, “You have someone in there…or somewhere, don’t you? I should have asked…” She stopped, her mortified gaze hardening into a glare. “Wait a minute. I’m less to blame here than you.” She struck his hands off. “What kind of a bastard remembers his commitment to another woman just before…What kind of promiscuous jerk starts a—a situation like this when-when…”

Kettle calling the pot black, anyone? But then, now wasn’t the time to let her know that he knew she was a two-timer herself.

He clamped her shoulders, wouldn’t let her shake him off. “You wait a minute. I have no one waiting for me in there, or anywhere.”

Her lower lip trembled. “Really?”

He barely stopped himself from catching that lip, making a feast of it. “Farah, I’m saying this once. I don’t have, and have never had, any kind of commitment to any woman.”

“Which probably doesn’t say much about you.”

Her scoffed volley was so unexpected it wrung a surprised laugh from him. “It says I’m free to start a ‘situation like this.’” She mumbled something. He frowned. “What did you say?”

She shrugged, her color deepening. “Nothing.”

“Farah.”

“Listen, I should just shut up, preferably forever, and get the hell out of here. Do me a favor and forget you ever saw me.”

“Alf la’nah—a thousand damnations—tell me what you said.”

She grumbled some more. Then she sighed. “I said ‘Of course you’re free to start a situation like this. And to end it. And to hell with your partner, anyway.’ Satisfied now?”

He laughed again. “Enti majnoonah, weh ajeebah…crazy and incredible.” He crowded her against the tree, snatched up her skirt, nudged her thighs apart as he lifted her, brought her down over an erection huge and hard enough for her to straddle. “Does it feel like I want to end this? Anywhere but inside you?”

She gasped as his hardness dug into her core through his taub and her sodden panties. Her hands clutched at some branches to hold on to, her legs going around his hips. “Then—then why…?”

He cupped her buttocks, rasped, “Why did I stop? Why aren’t we already in the throes of the first orgasm of many?”

His words jolted through her, sent her back arching and her hips grinding down on his erection. Moonlight exploded into fireworks. He would climax, would make her climax if he’d only thrust at her, like this, through their clothes… No. Stop.

He disentangled her legs from around his hips, gritted his teeth against the combined force of their frustration, took himself out of range of her scent and hunger.

He stared out into the gardens, still blind. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this is too fast.” He inhaled, struggled to come down. “It’s magical and unprecedented, it defies time and timing, but that’s why I can’t risk spoiling it. I can’t rush you into intimacy, no matter how willing you think you are, and cast recriminations or shame or regret on it all.”

He paused, dazed at his fluency. He should only be glad the pretense was coming so unaffectedly to him.

He turned to her, pain leveling, his sight back, found her looking smaller, her face shimmering with uncertainty. Stiff steps took him back to her. “I beg of you, ya ameerati, let’s start again, slowly…slower. Let me see you again…and again.”

“Oh, yes, yes, yes.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. She’d actually whooped, jumped up and down. This couldn’t be an act, could it?

But why should he care? It was going his way so easily.

Though maybe he should feel bad, if she wasn’t the unfeeling creature he’d been intending to manipulate?

No. He shouldn’t. Even if she wasn’t acting, only her choices mattered. She’d talked of discovering her real father only in terms of how it had hurt her. She cared nothing for the pain she was causing that father or the damage she was causing his kingdom. She thought of nothing but her own comfort and convenience and, right now, her own pleasure.

Well, he’d make her wait for it. He’d drive her insane wanting it. And when the time was right, he’d take her, ensnare her. Then he’d marry her. Once the marriage was a reality, it wouldn’t matter what she thought. Or wanted.

She didn’t matter. Only Judar did. Only the throne.

Reiterating the resolve, he rasped, “Let me take you home.”

“That would be wonderful…” Her words trailed off and her passion-drugged face fell. “I forgot. I drove here.”

“I’ll have one of my chauffeurs collect your car.” He tugged her to his side, felt a rush as she nestled into him as if she were a missing part. Focus, ya rejjal. This rubbish is what you say to her, not what you think. He inhaled. “But don’t think I’ll leave you on your doorstep. I’ll change you out of this ruined gown, wait for you to shower, tuck you in bed, give you a massage, kiss you good-night…”

She trembled, clung tighter, making him wonder if she was far gone enough to say yes to marriage right now.

No. A no from her would be final, and he had no other leverage but her need. And it had to be great indeed for her to consent to marriage according to his culture. One she couldn’t terminate in any court of law when she wanted out.

He’d show his hand after he’d entangled her. In every way.

When they reached the parking lot, he reluctantly withdrew the hand he’d found inside her bodice hungrily cupping her breast, pushed a button on a wireless device in his pocket. He took another taste of her lips as he reiterated inwardly, any moment now.

Just as Farah was almost climbing him again, the night around them splintered into the bursts of a dozen flashes.

Three

One second, Farah was swathed in Shehab’s power and eagerness, buoyed by the promise of the night ahead and so many days and nights to follow. The next she crashed back to reality, as figures materialized out of the void that had existed beyond her and Shehab, shattering their cocoon of intimacy.

It still took the flashes burning her retinas with splotches of painful blindness to make her realize what the figures were. Paparazzi.

Helplessness and outrage lurched through her, against the merciless greed of the predators who’d invaded her life countless times, polluted her image and shattered her peace. No matter that she’d practically given them license to do so, with her arrangement with Bill. It still made her ill every time.

They were now catching her in her one moment of unguarded abandon to joy, turning her discovery of Shehab and her own unknown depths into photographic evidence that would turn all the magic into something cheap and sordid.

But before distress bubbled to her lips, Shehab offered her the refuge she hadn’t cried for yet, whirling her around, his clothes swirling around him like a magician’s cape, enfolding her into what felt like another dimension, where nothing existed but the duet of their heartbeats, hers a cacophony of irregularity, his the very rhythm of steadiness.

Then other sounds invaded her awareness. Stampeding feet, imploding flashes and shouted outrage. She clung to him, her heart invading her throat, breached, under attack.

Then she was no longer touching ground, swept up in his power, the world tilting then bounding on fast, steady thuds.

Suddenly a car screeched to a stop a few feet away from them. A gleaming black stretch limo.

Half a dozen men materialized out of nowhere, one opening the back door for them, the rest surging toward her and Shehab, overtaking them, putting themselves between them and the commotion at their back. Shehab lowered himself inside the spacious vehicle with her still held securely in his arms. The door immediately slammed shut with a muted oomph and the limo shot forward soundlessly.

Shehab’s hands ran all over her, soothing, caressing her own hands, which ached from clutching him to her.

“It’s over,” he murmured. “My men will detain them.”

She unclenched her grasp on him, squeezed her eyes shut. Yeah, sure. Good luck with that. The paparazzi had already gotten what they’d hounded her for more than two years to obtain—evidence that she was a promiscuous tart who constantly cheated on her sugar daddy. And she’d obliged them this time, leaving a party disheveled and climbing all over a man like a cat in heat.

But it was worse than that. What hurt most was his men. With the way they’d appeared on the spot, they must have been invisibly following Shehab all along, must have seen…everything…

Mortification made her struggle out of his arms, spilled her on the plush leather couch beside him.

She felt sick at heart, at the whole thing, was afraid she’d be sick for real. Her head flopped on the headrest as everything tumbled through her mind in a vicious spin cycle.

“Can you please ask your chauffeur to pull over?”

He hit a button, rapped the order in Arabic. Another button flipped open a compartment from which he produced wet towels, then with utmost gentleness he wiped her face, neck, arms and the tops of her breasts with their fragrant coolness.

Long moments later, he stopped, looked at her. “Better?”

Oh, she was so not better. His caresses had at first soothed her, but then they’d become fire, licking exposed nerve endings. Her womb was contracting so hard, it was almost painful.

How could he do this to her? Even now, when she was dying of embarrassment?

She nodded, mutely. Otherwise she’d tell him the exact truth. She’d told him enough of that for one night.

Giving her such a smile, that of an artist looking in satisfaction on his handiwork, he tried to move her again onto his lap. She resisted, and he only coaxed her with more insistent caresses, his lips rubbing against her temple. “Let me soothe you, ya jameelati. You really are shaken up by the paparazzi’s appearance, aren’t you?”

“I’ve developed a phobia where they’re concerned,” she admitted.

He pressed her harder into his containment. “They’ve pursued you before?”

* * *

Shehab pulled back when Farah made no response, watched agitation shudder over her face. It felt so real he almost felt sorry for arranging the incident.

The plan had come to him when he’d been informed paparazzi had followed her when she’d left to come to the ball without Hanson, as he’d planned. He’d known they’d swarm the park until she made an exit, hoping to succeed where they’d failed so far, to catch her in one of the infidelities everyone insisted she regularly indulged in. He hadn’t been about to risk her slipping and providing them with their coveted photographic evidence, not when he’d have to make her his princess. But he’d decided to use their presence to his advantage.

He’d ordered his men to get rid of the paparazzi, to take their place, to pretend to ambush them on his signal. He’d planned to get her into a compromising position somehow, aiming to convince her that her spotless record of never having been caught in the act was at an end. But even his best projections hadn’t included his leaving the ball with her all over him.

He’d almost forgotten to give the signal, had done it with utmost reluctance, hating to have his men witness any measure of their intimacies, even the mild kiss he’d allowed them to see.

He’d expected her to cry out for him to send his men after the paparazzi, to make sure no evidence of her indiscretion remained in existence. He’d gambled on that driving her deeper into his trap, adding the feeling of being partners in barely averted scandal to the mix, compounding desire with debt.

But her response to the whole situation had again thrown him for a loop.

She’d been scared instead of incensed, was now looking so rattled, so pained, he almost blurted out that she had nothing to worry about.

Which proved he was thinking with nothing above the neck.

Yet—why hadn’t she made any demands that he contain the situation? Did she assume he would anyway, for his reputation?

She at last let out a wavering exhalation. “They’ve been hounding me since my father—my adoptive father—died.” So, no demand yet. When would it come? She went on, her voice strangled with emotion. “They always find a reason for their sick interest in me. I’m just scared witless that this latest episode has something to do with their getting wind that I was adopted, or worse, who my newfound biological father is. If it does, they’ll never leave me alone.”

He knew he should steer away from this subject, shouldn’t risk her connecting him with the situation between her and King Atef. He couldn’t resist asking, “Because of the drama of the discoveries? Or is your bioligical father’s identity worthy of creating a sensation?”

“Both. Just the fact that Francois Beaumont isn’t my father would make them salivate. But oh, boy, is my biological father’s identity sensational. If I can hardly believe it, imagine what the tabloids would make of it.”

He had to be satisfied with that, would recall her answer later for analysis. For now he had to end this strain of thought, divert her to safer grounds.

He shrugged. “They could have been after me.”

“But no one knew who you are, except me…”

Her breath left her in a rush. He gritted his teeth at the response its freshness and femininity wrung from him. At the surge of what felt too much like shame.

Anger at the stupid feeling roughened his voice. “Yes.”

Her breath caught now. Savoring the depth of the privilege he’d imparted to no one but her? Let her. It was the best way to snare a woman, appealing to her vanity.

Just as he was sure he’d fathomed her reaction, she frowned. “Do you realize how stupid that was? To blow your anonymity like that to someone you just met?”

That was again the last thing he’d expected her to say.

Unsure how to react, he raised an eyebrow. “I trusted you?”

Her glower, her tone, only grew sharper. “And which part of your anatomy made that monumental decision?”

What he’d just been thinking. He shook his head as if it would make this turn in conversation make better sense. “I have made it so far by trusting my instincts…”

The irony of his words made him stop. For his instincts were lying. They’d been lying ever since he’d laid eyes on her.

She mistook his pause for belated realization. “See what I mean? So you were right to trust me, but what if you weren’t? Worse still, what if someone overheard you on the terrace?”

He stared at her. Anyone would have sworn that she cared. Knew how to care. But he knew better.

“No one heard me. And then no one who does know me could have recognized me. I was covered from the eyes down…”

She huffed a sardonic laugh. “And you consider that a disguise? Do you think anyone wouldn’t recognize your eyes? Not to mention your physique. Put them together, and anyone who’d seen you across a street would recognize you.”

He was used to women flattering him, knew much of their flattery used truths as ammunition. But he’d always recognized the self-serving intentions behind the adulation. He detected none now in hers, delivered in this no-nonsense, exasperated-at-his-obliviousness way. He barely stopped himself from hauling her on top of him again and showing her how he reciprocated in kind.

Which was probably the effect she’d planned. Or was that as far-fetched as it sounded to him?

Getting more confused, he exhaled. “I was in that ball for over an hour before you arrived. No one recognized me.”

“Then the paparazzi were after me.” She seemed to deflate beside him. “It’s weird, but I’m actually relieved they were.” Suddenly she shot up straight again, clutched his forearm. “But— the photos…” Here it came. The belated demand. “They might have taken some of your face. I’m used to being pursued, but I can’t bear it if being with me is going to expose you to their viciousness.”

And? Where was the demand for him to undo it? For his own privacy and comfort, of course, not hers?

None came. Instead, her eyes suddenly sparkled with moisture and she choked, “I’m so sorry, Shehab.”

And he gave in. He lowered his head with a groan, stilled her tremulous words and lips with his, his tongue gliding over her plumpness, unable to wait to plunge into her again. She opened for him with a whimper, overpowering him with her surrender, allowing him all the licenses he needed.

Desire crested, threatening to overcome all considerations. He severed their meld, looked down on her. “Don’t be sorry, ever, ya jameelati.” Then he gave in again, ending his own maneuver, giving her what she hadn’t asked for, gaining nothing for himself. “And don’t worry, either. Never fear anything when I’m with you. I’d defend you against anything.” And he would. Only because she was the key to protecting the throne of Judar, he insisted to himself. “My men will make sure those paparazzi have nothing to publish.”

“You mean they’ll…? Oh…oh.” Her eyes widened, the tears stagnating in them, making them gleam like jewels in the semidarkness. Then tears surged again, dejection replacing agitation in her expression. “Not that that makes me feel any better.” It didn’t? “The paparazzi probably saw far less than your men did.”

It took him a second to understand. She thought his men had witnessed all their intimacies in the gardens.

His outrage felt real even to himself when he growled, “You think I would have almost taken you if my men were all around?”

She blinked, tears receding, if not before two escaped, rolled down the velvet of her cheek. “They weren’t?”

“B’Ellahi…” He caught the drops of precious moisture in his mouth, kissed his way to her trembling lips again. “Of course not. I buzzed for them the moment the paparazzi appeared.” Which was as near the truth as could be.

This time she sagged in his arms, an exhalation wracking her voluptuous frame. “Thank God. I was mortified thinking they must have seen it all, how it must have looked to them even though it felt like magic to me…”

This was what had so upset her so much? The thought that others had witnessed their lovemaking, defiling the moments of magic with base thoughts and sordid projections?

Not knowing what to think anymore, he pressed her harder to his chest. She surrendered to his caresses for a long moment, then she stiffened by degrees, until she pushed out of his arms, sat up facing him in the prim pose of someone about to deliver an unpleasant message to a total stranger. It was her transparent features that betrayed her real emotions. Embarrassment, awkwardness, hesitation.

“We may have shaken them off, but now that you’ve deprived them of prime scandal material, they’ll be more rabid than ever. They’ll be waiting for us back at my place.” She suddenly groaned. “Listen, just drop me off at any hotel. I’ll spend the night there, then they can photograph me alone to their hearts’ content when I return tomorrow after work.”

So, the maneuver hadn’t led where he’d projected, was now backfiring. He had to improvise a course correction.

He took her hands to his lips slowly, made sure he had her trembling in his power again before he said, “I have a better idea. The night is still young and we can stall them until they believe you won’t go back. Have dinner with me.”

Her hand convulsed around the kiss he placed in her palm, her fingers digging in his jaw. He’d kept his eyes on hers all the time, watched as she capitulated under the surge of eagerness for more of him. He still waited until she gasped, nodded her consent. Then he opened the channel to his chauffeur again.

“Seeda. To the airport.”

“The airport?”

At her croak, Shehab smiled at her, slow and hot. “We’re going to have dinner on board my jet.”

Of course. Had she thought—if she could still count thinking among her brain functions anymore—that he’d take her to a restaurant, no matter how lavish, or even a yacht or a mansion, as any ordinary tycoon would have done?

He pulled her into a loose embrace and held her all the way to the airport, his hands cascading caresses all over her until she felt he’d scrambled her nervous transmissions forever.

The limo finally stopped and he got out, came around to open her door for her and almost had to carry her limp form out.

She looked dazedly around, realized they were beneath a giant silver-finished jetliner. The warm moisture of the night after the cool dryness of the limo sprouted goose bumps all over her, adding to her imbalance. She was thankful for his support all the way up the Air Force One–style air-stairs that led from the tarmac to the inside of the jet.

She’d been on private jets before. But none had come close to Shehab’s. Her father had been a mere multimillionaire who’d had two small jets, and his acquaintances had been on par with him. While Bill, who was as big a multi-billionaire as they came, had started out penniless and to this day couldn’t bring himself to spend a penny more than needed to fulfill his needs in terms of function and convenience. It was clear Shehab believed in fulfilling those same needs but spared no expense in pursuit of esthetics and luxury. She said so.

He smiled down at her. “I spend a good deal of my life in the air, and I travel with staff on many occasions. Also, I often don’t have the luxury of commuting into the cities I land in and have to conclude all my conferencing and entertaining onboard.”

“So you have to have a palace in the sky to do it in, huh?”

He raised one eyebrow. “That’s a strange chastisement coming from someone who inhabits the world of high finance.”

“Oh, I certainly don’t inhabit it. According to whichever of my skills is needed on a given day, I range between being the tarot card reader, the resident nag, the cleaning lady and the…uh…guide dog of the world of high finance.”

He tipped his head back and his laughter boomed, sending her heartbeats scattering all over the jet’s lush carpeting.

“Ya Ullah, will I ever even come close to guessing what you’ll say next?” He still chuckled as he led her through many compartments, where his staff hovered in the background, to the spiral staircase leading to the upper deck, all the time casting his enjoyment down on her. “So you consider this jet too pretentious? A waste of money better spent on worthy causes?”

Her lips twisted. “I think any personal item with a telephone number price is ludicrous.”

“Not when it’s a utility that enables me to steadily make hundreds of millions of dollars more, money I assure you I use in many venues that do serve worthy causes.”

Her eyes widened. “I remember now. Many of the global interests you have controlling shares in have varied, not to mention widely effective, aid programs. When I investigated your investment portfolio, I thought to myself, that Aal Ajman guy is trying to build himself a reputation as a philanthropist on par with Bruce Wayne…” She stopped when his laughter boomed again, then mumbled, “It’s a relief you’re invulnerable to the shrapnel that keeps flying out of my mouth.”

“Like Clark Kent, you mean? Very flattering, being likened to two superheroes inside two sentences.”

“I did think earlier you’d fill out one of their costumes very nicely…” She groaned, looked up at him helplessly.

His eyes told her how much he enjoyed her uncensored opinions, then his lips brushed her burning cheek. “I am beyond flattered. I want to be a superhero in your eyes, ya jameelati.”

Only reaching the upper deck stopped her from saying he was. He walked her across an ultrachic foyer and through an automatic door that he opened using a fingerprint recognition module. It whirred shut behind them as he guided her to one of the cream leather couches. She hit the plush surface, looked around the grand lounge drenched in golden lights, earth tones and the serenity of sumptuousness and seclusion. At the far end of the huge space that occupied the full breadth of the jet, a folding screen decorated in Middle Eastern designs of complimenting colors obscured another area behind it.

Shehab bent, brushed her temple with his lips. “This—” he gestured to a door at the other end of the lounge “—is the lavatory. Those buttons access all functions and services. Order refreshments or whatever you wish for until I come back.” He straightened up and turned away. Before she could run after him, demanding to be taken wherever he was going, he paused at the lounge’s door, added with a deep vocal caress, “I’ll rush back to you in minutes.”

She slumped back in her seat, closed her eyes for a moment before she took his advice, got up and headed to the lavatory.

She came out to find him waiting for her where he’d left her. She did a double-take, faltered, gulping air around a lump that materialized in her throat. He’d taken off his costume.

And no. He wasn’t naked. But he probably wouldn’t affect her more if he was. OK, he would, but it was bad enough now that she wasn’t ready to think how much worse it could get. And he was wearing only a simple white shirt and black pants. If anything about him or what he provoked in her could be called simple.

He smiled that slow smile of his, no doubt noting the drool accumulating at her feet. Then he extended a powerful hand in invitation. It felt as if it was by his will alone that she covered the space between them, unable to stop devouring everything about his relatively exposed grandeur, what she’d thought she’d imagined beneath his robes, in unmanageable gulps.

Reality again far outstripped her imagination. The regal shape of his head, the vigorous waves and the deep, dark gloss of his hair accentuated the chiseled sculpture of his face, deepened the hypnosis of his eyes.

She tore hers away from their influence and almost moaned. The breadth of his shoulders and chest had owed nothing to the obscuring clothes and was magnified now that they were covered only in a layer of finest silk. They, and his arms, bulged with power and symmetry under the cloth that hid and detailed at once, both actions wickedly tantalizing. His abdomen was sparse and hard, his waist narrow, as were his hips, before his thighs flowed with strength and virility on the way down to endless legs.

Magnificent was certainly no fitting description. He did far surpass her adolescent visions.

“Come sit down, Farah.”

She sat down where the tranquil sweep of his hand indicated. Before she collapsed. The way he said her name, the way he looked at her, the way he moved, breathed, just was—it was all…too much.

He followed her down on the couch, secured her in a seat belt, buckled his own, then turned away as he pressed a button on a remote control–like device. The engines, which she’d just realized had been on for a while now, revved higher and the jet started moving.

But she couldn’t even feel surprise.

She felt nothing but her blood freezing inside her veins.

As he’d turned away, she’d caught something in his eyes, something coming over his face.

A maliciousness. A ruthlessness.

Suddenly the ice fractured, and a geyser of alarm scalded through her.

She’d gotten on his plane with him, the plane that was now taking off for only he knew where, someone she’d met just hours ago, trusting him without question, that he was who he’d said he was, that he hid his identity for privacy reasons and not for sinister ones.

But what if she’d been wrong? All along? What if their meeting had more to it that she thought? That he’d targeted her for some reason? Being who she was, at first Francois Beaumont’s daughter, then Bill Hanson’s right hand, had been reason enough for people, especially men, to target her, each with their own agenda. And Shehab, if he was who he’d said he was, must consider Bill a rival, could have arranged the whole ball to find an opening to the unfathomable Bill. He might, like many others before him, think she was it.

Why hadn’t she considered this before?

Wait—wait…Had he expressed interest in her before or after she’d told him who she was?

God—why was she wondering? It wasn’t as if her identity was a secret. He could have come to the ball knowing all about her. Then she’d gone and given him the best opening to get her alone, to work his magic on her. It wouldn’t be the first or last time a man tried to seduce her to get to Bill.

But the glimpse of harshness she’d seen in his eyes…

Oh, God—it could be even worse. He could just be an all-powerful and jaded predator who liked to seduce and abuse women. But she’d thrown herself in his trap too easily, depriving him of the thrill of the hunt and he hadn’t wanted to act out his plans for her until he had her totally at his mercy…

He turned unfathomable eyes to her and she felt all her doubts congeal into ugly reality.

Whatever he was, whatever he intended, none of the past hours had been real. None of it had been for her.

How could she have thought he wanted her? No one ever had. How could she have thought he, of all people, could be at the mercy of such a brutal attraction as hers was to him?

Misery engulfed her whole. But she couldn’t succumb to it now. Whatever she did, she had to be very careful. She couldn’t let her suspicions show. At best she could corner him into an admission, make him turn nasty. At worst she could enrage him, make him show her his true face, make him—make him…

One cabled arm went around her shoulder, pulling her into his hardness and heat, his other hand gentleness itself as he cupped her face and turned it up to him, his eyes blazing with desire once again.

And she couldn’t bear it.

All her resolutions crumpled and she blurted out, “Please, stop. Whatever you want with me, please, just tell me what it is and get it over with.”

Four

Shehab stiffened at Farah’s words.

They could only have one meaning.

She’d realized he was playing her.

How had she suspected? He was certain he’d done nothing to give himself away. So what was it? Intuition? Or was she playing a counter-game of her own? If so, to what end? To have him on the defensive, ready to do anything to negate her accusation, tipping the balance of power in her favor?

But she was trembling in his arms, her eyes brimming with tears again, her breathing so erratic it made her breasts shudder against his chest. Not that she seemed aware of this, or the effect it was having on him even now.

Was she that good an actress? He’d known the best virtuoso improvisers and situation analysts who played out impromptu roles wholeheartedly. But he’d always had an infallible detector for insincerity. He sensed none from her now.

Whatever this was, it had struck him from a blind spot. He had to tread with extreme caution until he figured out what was going on. He must maintain the ground he’d won.

To do that, he couldn’t pressure her. Even if every instinct was telling him to crush her in his arms and kiss her until she was incoherent with need again.

He took his hands away from her, unbuckled his seat belt, rose to his feet. He struggled to empty his eyes of urgency, to infuse them with all the gentleness he could muster. “Farah, ya azeezati—my dear, I don’t understand anything. What’s wrong?”

“Please, stop acting.” She slumped forward, her spun-silk hair and hands hiding her face, her voice thickening with emotion. “I can take anything but that…”

He was at a loss. She knew he was acting. But he wasn’t, not when it came to wanting her. So what did she sense? Could she be so sensitive she could feel beyond his raging desire for her to his basic agenda?

It didn’t matter what she felt or how she’d come to feel it. Whatever it was, he had to divert her, lull her again.

“And I can take anything but your anguish,” he groaned, no longer knowing if his agitation was feigned or real. “Farah, B’Ellahi, mere minutes ago you were as elated as I was at being together and now… Arjooki—please tell me what went wrong.”

She raised streaming eyes, slamming into him with the force of a gut punch. “Everything. I saw it.”

His hand went to his midriff as if to ward off the pain. But he couldn’t afford to let go of her gaze. It would be like admitting his guilt.

He held out against the power of her hurt and accusation, groaned again, “Saw what?”

“Your face, your eyes, filling with…intent, harshness…I don’t know.” She shook her head, her hair undulating her confusion around her shaking shoulders. “But you’re not ‘elated’to be with me. You don’t want me…you’re just like everyone else. No one ever wanted me for me. Or—or it’s even worse…”

What had she seen? A stray self-congratulatory thought when he’d been prematurely celebrating his triumph?

Fool. He shouldn’t even think anything of the sort before he had her signature on all binding documents.

But her distress felt real. So was that the origin of her cold-as-ice, hot-as-hell persona? Not that he’d seen any evidence of her cold side himself, but he could see how she could have been pursued for all the wrong reasons. Sport, ambition, competition, all forms of exploitation. Had the incident he’d manufactured unsettled her so much that it brought back every unsavory situation she’d ever been exposed to, painting their situation, and him, with the brush of suspicion? Or had it only sharpened her hazy senses so that she felt he was pursuing her for reasons unconnected with her own desirability?

Suddenly he was sick of the whole thing. If her reputation had been unearned, as everything he’d felt from her so far kept insisting, if she’d been hurt by men’s perfidy before, he shouldn’t add to her injuries.

But what could he possibly do now? Confess his plan? He’d stood a chance of a favorable response if he’d told her who he was at the beginning. He would have at least gotten points for truthfulness. But he’d been so ready for deception as a necessity for success, he’d lost that chance. After all that had happened between them, all the lies he’d told her, she’d be incensed, might reject him with no hope of reconciliation.

What would he do if she did, when he couldn’t let her go? Kidnap her as she’d implied was one of the possibilities he’d seduced her for? Then what? Hold her hostage? Force her to marry him?

Just the thought that things could go so far had bile rising in his throat. He had to stop the situation from spiraling out of control. And he had only one way out.

She’d accused him of not wanting her for herself. That he could contest vehemently and sound sincere. For he was.

“You’re so wrong I would laugh if this wasn’t so distressing. I want you, Farah. I’ve never wanted anything or anyone like I want you.” He took a step toward her and she flinched. He flinched, too, stopped. “Ya Ullah, are you afraid of me?” Her eyes closed on a look of total confusion. And he rasped, “Am I paying the price for all of the people who tried to take advantage of you? But as you said, it’s even worse. I doubt you actually feared any of them.”

Her face contorted on emotions so clear it felt as if she’d shouted them in his mind. Mortification ruled them all.

But her tears were stopping. Then she hiccupped. “It was just-just—finding the plane taking off, that look on your face— and I scared myself with my own speculations…” She paused, gave him a hesitant, vulnerable look. “Do you really want me?”

He drove his hands in his hair in frustration he had no need to feign. “Can’t you feel it, in your every cell, setting your senses on fire, how much I desire you?”

She nodded, shook her head, at a total loss. “I do—but I felt…something deeper. If you have any hidden agenda besides…”

He wanted to swear to her that he didn’t. He couldn’t. The lie clogged in his throat. But he had to defuse her doubts. He must. His only recourse was to reach for whatever truths existed between the lies, press those home to her.

He came down beside her, reached for her restless hands, found them freezing in sweat. He exerted enough pressure to beseech her not to pull them away, while letting her feel she could if she wanted, his eyes soothing her with all his will.

“Every word I told you about how much I desire you is the truth, Farah. And I can’t bear to see you in this condition, to know that I’m the reason for it.”

She shook her head again. “You’re not, it was me.”

“It was me.” He smoothed a glossy lock of hair away from her cheek. “I should have realized how this situation would be overwhelming for you. You were shaken from all that had happened in the past hours, our meeting, our surrender to what you so aptly called ‘magic’ followed by the paparazzi’s intrusion and our escape from them. But instead of giving you time to catch your breath, I whisked you onboard my jet, where you found yourself surrounded by two dozen strange men, most of them armed, as you must have sensed. Then, without even consulting you, I ordered take off. You thought we’d have dinner onboard on the ground, didn’t you?”

Her eyes said she hadn’t thought at all. He caressed her cheek, almost moaning at its firm softness. “You haven’t even thought what would happen, and you found yourself receding from your world. Then I added insult to injury when the takeoff had my mind straying to a precarious deal I’m involved in at the moment, giving you a glimpse of the ruthless businessman side of me. It’s no wonder you leaped to conclusions.”

She winced, bit her lip. Then she finally quavered, “Can you order us to land, please?”

His every muscle clenched. “You don’t believe me.”

“I do,” she protested. Then she pulled an adorably sheepish face. “I just need to be on the ground so I can dig a hole deep enough never to be seen again.”

He exhaled the breath that had been about to burst his lungs. But he wouldn’t let his guard down again. He’d averted a catastrophe this time. He couldn’t let another brew.

He moved closer, still testing. She melted against him and he inhaled with the reprieve. “Don’t feel embarrassed by your fears, ya saherati. You had every right to wonder, to worry. In fact, I’m almost upset with you for not being more stringent in your examination of my character and intentions before you put yourself in my power this way. You know, like you were cross with me for trusting you based on such a short acquaintance. But then, I believe you wouldn’t have done that with anyone else, that you instinctively felt that you have more power over me than you could ever hand me over you.”

Farah closed her eyes, shutting out the sight of him, wishing she’d blip out of existence.

She’d made a mess of things. And he was letting her off the hook, exonerating her of all blame, shouldering it all himself.

But she couldn’t believe he wasn’t offended for real. She was used to being maligned by strangers, by public opinion, but if someone she cared anything for jumped to such unfounded and offensive conclusions about her, she wouldn’t be quick to forgive and forget. Could it be true he did so completely?

She opened her eyes, found anxiety still tingeing his gaze.

He had. And more. He felt horrible about his alleged role in her out-of-the-blue upheaval. He’d come up with explanations that saved her from looking like an irrational airhead. She felt herself shrink to the size and significance of a bug.

She pressed her face into his hand. “Please, stop being so gallant and understanding or no hole will be deep enough.”

She felt like whooping when his lips twitched. “I can see this developing into a loop, with me saying I did it and you saying, no, I did. So how about we let our feelings of guilt cancel out each other and get on with our enchanted evening?”

“Why would you want to spend more time with a moron who more or less accused you of being a fraud or even a criminal?”

“I can wonder why you would want to spend more time with a lout who didn’t even ask your permission before taking you out of your national airspace. But I won’t. We agreed to think the best of each other’s actions and motivations.”

She gave him a sardonic look. “I didn’t agree to anything. But you’re used to this, aren’t you? You announce stuff and assume everyone’s in agreement with it.”

“See?” His eyes crinkled. “I did it again. You’ve uncovered my biggest vice. I’m part bulldozer.”

She gave in to the urge, ran a finger down a slashed cheekbone. “Only part? And that’s your biggest vice? You sure there aren’t bigger ones?”

“As much as I’d love to have you take my character apart and haul out vices for examination, we have more pressing issues to worry about now. Like food. Didn’t you work up an appetite after all the upheavals? I ordered my chef to prepare my favorite dishes from my country’s cuisine for you to sample.”

The way he said that, and in his mouth-watering voice, too, made her stomach grumble.

His lips spread wide. “I guess I have my answer.”

He pushed more buttons. In minutes he opened the door to a parade of waiters holding their trays high. Even under covers, aromas emanated from the dishes that had her licking her lips.

He rose to his feet, held out his hand. She took it, let him pull her to her feet. Before she fell against him, he pulled back, his eyes once more becoming unfathomable. This time the only alarm she felt was that she might have, in spite of his assurances, introduced distance between them.

He led her behind the screen to a dining area with stainless steel–backed, burgundy velvet-upholstered chairs and a Plexiglas table for two laid out in stunning hand-painted china, silver, crystal and burgundy silk.

As soon as the last waiter had departed, Shehab raised a silver dome off a service plate. The sight and aroma hit her senses in unison.

At her moan he said, “This is matazeez—veal cubes cooked in tomato sauce before adding okra, aubergine and zucchini. The stuff that looks like ravioli is specially prepared dough that’s rolled out and cut and dropped in the mix before it’s fully cooked so that it retains its chewiness. Some people consider this a full meal, some eat it with rice or khobez.”

“That’s this bread?” He nodded, and as she bent for a closer sniff, his smile grew as hot as the dish simmering on the flames. “Who would have guessed you’d know so much about the preparation of the dishes you love.”

“You didn’t think it possible for me to know how to cook?”

“If you do, I’ll know you’re a hallucination.”

He chuckled as he pushed a button, made a chair retract from the table on rails embedded in the fuselage.

She flopped into it, groaned. “Don’t describe any more dishes. Just looking at them and smelling them was making my stomach lick its lips, but your descriptions are making it grow forks and knives.” He laughed. She moaned. At the sound. At the scents of food mixed with that of virility.

He served her a portion, but when she tried to reach for a real fork and knife, he stopped her, sat and maneuvered the opposing chair until it touched hers, picked up a fork and started feeding her, all the time caressing her with his eyes.

And what could she do but wallow in the incredible experience of being waited on, fed, by this god?

She demolished the portion in minutes, exclaiming at the taste and texture, participating in his quiz of guessing the elusive seasonings, correctly identifying cinnamon and nutmeg. That very distinctive spice turned out to be something she’d never heard about before, semmaq, a spice unique to his region.

At some point, he started alternating forkfuls between them, and sharing the meal with him that way surpassed even the intimacy of the frenzied time they’d shared in the gardens.

When he started feeding her dessert, she moaned. “This I have to ask about. You can resume your recipe description.”

He chuckled. “That’s maasoob. It’s khobez, cut into small pieces, fried crispy, mashed with banana and brown sugar and caramelized in butter. The sprinkling on top is paprika, saffron and the tasty black seeds are hab el barakah, literally, blessing seeds.”

She moaned again as the sinful concoction slid on her tongue and down her throat. “Blessing or curse? My hips and thighs are already screaming the latter.”

“Those are a blessing unto themselves. A little more of them would be a bigger blessing.”

“Oh, no. I struggled long and hard with my weight as I grew up and I’m never going back there.”

He put the spoon down, his eyes a heavy caress over her body. “I wanted you to sample the richness of the flavors of my culture, but if this perfection is a result of your hard work, I certainly won’t do anything to sabotage it.”

A tightness clutched her throat. Whenever she’d made a statement like that in the past, everyone had scoffed at her with reactions ranging from disbelief that she had such concerns, to accusing her of fishing for compliments, to choosing to believe she’d just been blessed with a nuclear metabolism and could gorge herself on junk constantly and not gain an ounce.

But he understood. And supported. He was just phenomenal.

And he was on his feet, inviting her to leave the table.

She let him lead her back to the lounge, where he took her to a different seating area, this time sitting on an armchair across from her. She watched him, obsessing over his every detail.

He watched her examining his every inch for a long moment, then he suddenly said, “It just came to me, one more thing that I think caused your alarm. The man you trusted and wanted was the man you saw in the Tuareg garb. Seeing me in these clothes must have made you feel as if I were someone else.”

Her eyes jerked up from watching the ripple of steel muscles below the fine cloth of his pants. “This—uh, Tuareg garb is how you usually dress in your country?”

“Hardly. Tuaregs come from and still live mostly in the North African desert and are quite proud of the purity of their lineage. My ancestors, who come from all over Asia wouldn’t have been allowed within a mile of marriage into their tribes.”

“God, I must sound so ignorant, assuming all Arabs have the same origins.”

The teasing in his eyes intensified. “Tuaregs can’t be called Arabs. They call themselves Kel Tamajag, or Speakers of Tamasheq, a language that has nothing in common with Arabic. But it’s understandable that you might lump peoples who hail from a general direction into one basket. Back home, a lot of people consider all white people ‘Americans.’”

“I’m sure that’s not true of those above a certain education level. People with my education anywhere in the world have no excuse for being so oblivious and making such generalizations. I’m lamentably ignorant about your part of the world.”

“I will teach you. Everything you want to know.”

And she’d bet he didn’t mean only about the complexities of his region and its various cultures and peoples.

She groped for breath. “OK, you can start now. What do you wear where you come from?”

“Most men wear white taub and ghotrah or red-and-white-checkered shmagh with black eggal headdress. They add a black abaya if it gets cold. I wear modern clothes, except in formal functions. Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t always go around looking like I’ve just stepped out of Arabian Nights.”

“It does disappoint me.” And she had to tell him that? Then she told him more. “Which is weird, really. I’ve never much cared for that kind of getup, or even seen the Arabian Nights connection. But then, I’ve never seen you in one…”

It was hopeless. She was doomed to tell him everything just as it formed in her mind. She just prayed it didn’t put him off.

He seemed anything but put off as his eyes devoured her. “Ya gummari, I have an extensive wardrobe right out of my culture’s rich past and I’ll dress up in whatever takes your fancy. I bet I’ll learn to love these intricate outfits when you’re undressing me, layer by layer…” Then he sighed. “Until then, I must settle for fantasies and anticipation.”

Blood shot to her face before splashing through her body.

He shook his head as he took in her condition. “Hours ago you were ready to let me make love to you, and now you’re blushing to your toes at my mildly erotic innuendoes?”

“Mildly? Yeah, right. But that aside, wouldn’t you be embarrassed out of your skin if it was sinking in that you’d almost done something so out of character with a virtual stranger, and but for his clout, it would have been plastered all over the tabloids for the world to see?”

“Don’t you think ‘out of character’ is too mild a description for anything I’d do if the stranger were of the ‘his’ variety?”

She glared at him. “You’re laughing at me!”

His shook his head again. “With you.”

It didn’t placate her. Her brain felt scrambled, would remain so as long as he kept “…making me make a fool of myself.”

Shehab watched her in rising confusion.

Was she telling him she didn’t go for sex with strangers? Didn’t indulge in one-night stands? Or literally few-minutes stands, as she’d begged him to be?

The last of the ease in her pose, the softness in her lips and the dreaminess in her eyes evaporated. “Sorry I said that out loud. No one makes you do anything you don’t want to. I made a fool of myself and I got caught. And I have to face the music sooner or later. So, listen, when we land, forget about what I said about going to a hotel. I’ll take a taxi home, get it over with.”

For some reason the spell kept being interrupted and this unpredictable woman kept swinging between opposites while he was left reeling. First the uncharted reaction to the paparazzi, then that empathic episode. And now. What was it now? Was she coming to her senses, envisioning possible damages from their liaison?

But if she was, why wasn’t she trying to get away with it? So far there was no incriminating evidence against her.

Had she decided he wasn’t worth the trouble of risking anything further? Was she cutting him off?

“You promised to see me again, and again.”

“Yeah, that was before I remembered I was a paparazzi magnet. And I can’t let you be plastered all over the tabloids.”

Was this just an excuse to get rid of him? Or could it be she was really worried about causing him a scandal? Her words did have the inimitable ring of truth to them. Not that, after tonight, he’d recognize the truth if it punched him in the gut.

“You’re concerned for my privacy?”

“It takes one who has none to know how valuable it is. You’ve been very wise to keep your anonymity. Nothing is worth endangering that.”

“You are. Worth that, and far more.”

She winced. “Don’t exaggerate, please. You barely know me. How do you know what I’m worth? And from the way I behaved with you so far, I know any man would be thinking I’m not worth much. But you of all men… So I believe you want me, but I’d hate to peek inside your head and read what you really think of me.”

“I, of all men? What’s so different about me?”

“What’s not different about you? And then, you come from a culture that glorifies feminine modesty and virtue, and is cruel to women who don’t abide by its strict rules, and I—I…”

“Your mind is taking off on tangents again. You’re punishing yourself for a nonexistent misdemeanor. I don’t believe so-called virtue is required of women any more than it is of men. Do you consider me to be a degenerate for letting our first encounter take an erotic turn that fast?”

“You know I don’t. It was you who stopped, you who had control over yourself, while I—I…”

“You were over your head.”

She nodded, her eyes downcast.

“I was, too. The one thing that made me stop was my fear of this exact situation, after your blood cooled and you couldn’t defend your actions to yourself, driving you to push me away in shame and discomfort at what you consider a lapse.”

“I didn’t say it was a lapse. I said it was out of character. So much so, I don’t know how to handle it, don’t know what to think…”

“Well, I do. I think I’ve never known desire like that existed. But it is so pure, so powerful I don’t know how to handle it, either. The one thing I could think to do was to slow down, savor it…savor you. Though you’re making it almost impossible to do that. Everything you say, every breath you draw is making me want to unwrap you and swallow you whole.”

Her color brightened, her gaze wavered. “Are you sure seeing me again won’t jeopardize your privacy? I’m overexposed and quite often maligned, and it would be awful if any of the venom I inspire from the media spilled into your life. I can’t let it.”

He was suddenly incensed. With the people who caused such upheaval in her life. With himself for ever devising the plan that had injured her so much. That could end with him losing her.

He rose from his armchair and joined her on the couch. “The paparazzi can’t touch me,” he bit off. “And I will convince them to collectively forget you ever existed.”

She blinked at his ferocity. Then she did another totally unexpected thing. She giggled. “I assume you’d use methods harsher than what’s fully sanctioned by the law to obtain this miraculous result?”

“I wouldn’t be doing anything they didn’t richly deserve,” he rumbled. “Breeching others’ privacy, shattering their peace.”

“You come from a culture that advocates an eye for an eye, don’t you? Uh…there I go, putting my foot in it again…”

“Never worry about saying anything to me. I have no sensitivities for you to tread on. Even if I did, you shouldn’t censor your words, anyway. I think political correctness is becoming reverse persecution, and I refuse to bow to its unreasonable demands. Anyway, you’re right about my culture, and me, advocating an eye for an eye. But I believe the rest of this decree is the relevant part. The aggressor is to blame.”

Her smile died as she digested his words. He was thankful to note that her agitation hadn’t returned with the dimming.

Then she sighed. “God, that’s tempting. But now that I realize what kind of power your possess, I can’t use it for my own ends. With great power comes great responsibility and all that. I’d feel I was nuking someone for spitting in my face. No, leave them be. They’ll get bored with me sooner or later.”

“You’d be that merciful when they’ve shown you no mercy? When they make their livelihood by preying on your life?”

“I don’t know about merciful. I just can’t be party to the ugliness they propagate, and by retaliating I’d just be poisoning the world more, not to mention muddying my own karma.”

He clamped his jaw on the need to pulverize her reticence, wanting her to give him carte blanche to remove the vultures from her path once and for all.

He wrestled the urge down, if only by coming to a decision that he would do it, if with less-than-harsh methods to honor her choice. He still couldn’t stop himself from saying, “I will keep on hoping that you’ll change your mind, let me use my…discretion in dealing with them. Until then, they’re coming nowhere near you. We won’t go back to your home. And I certainly won’t take you to a hotel. Come be with me, ya jameelati.”

After a stunned moment, she stammered, “I know I gave you the impression—hell, I asked you to—to…but I really am out of my depth here, Shehab.”

“I’m not asking you to come to my place to share my bed. I said we’d go slow, and we will, as slow as we need to. I’m offering my protection and hospitality as long as you need it.”

“Oh, God, Shehab, I don’t think…”

“How about you stop thinking for a while?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “But that’s the problem. I stopped thinking at all since I met you.”

His fingers feathered her eyes open. “And why is that such a bad thing? The past hours have been a roller coaster. Take the next, and all the time you stay at my place, to settle down, relax, enjoy my company, savor me as I intend to savor you.”

“But I have to…to…I don’t know what I have to do, OK? Whatever it is, I can’t do it with you around. Please, Shehab, just take me home. I need to wrap my head around tonight, around what happened between us, the way I—I…”

And she fell silent.

He was losing her. She was coming to her senses. He couldn’t afford to let her. He had to move into a higher gear.

He slipped his cell phone out of his pocket, gave a twofold order. The first part was another improvisation in his plan. He told her the second part. “I ordered the plane to land.”

She nodded, looked anywhere but at him. He put the phone on the couch between them, gritted his teeth and counted down…

A buzz went through her. It took her seconds to realize it wasn’t another jolt of awareness. It was his phone’s vibration.

He answered it unhurriedly, his eyes on her.

After the first seconds his eyes shifted away and his face closed. Her heart contracted. Bad news? Personal?

He bit off a string of Arabic before he snapped the phone shut. She watched him with a thudding heart as he placed it on the table before them, his moves deliberate, as if to delay a reaction to something big. And bad.

Then he finally sought her eyes and her heart lurched. “An unforeseen crisis has blown apart the business deal I mentioned earlier.”

She stared at him, held her breath, hoping he’d elaborate. Next second she wished she hadn’t hoped. She should have known whatever she hoped for would happen in reverse.

He went on. “I can’t predict how long it will take to perform damage control, to reestablish matters. Weeks. Maybe months.”

“Oh.” That was all she could say.

What was there to say when he was telling her it had been too good to go any further? He’d go back home, for weeks, maybe months. And he’d forget all about her.

It was over before it had even begun.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.