Now fate had brought him exploding back into her life, only for her to find he’d become this exhilarating delight of a man who was still making her struggle for every inch closer…
The GPS announced that they’d arrived at their destination.
Bringing the car to a stop, she squinted up through the windshield.
He lived in a… warehouse?
His next words confirmed it. “Now that you’ve driven me home, I’ll have someone tail you to yours.”
She took the key out and handed it to him. When he wouldn’t take it, she placed it on his lap and took off her seat belt. “Which part of ‘I’m taking care of you tonight’ didn’t you get?”
His gaze bathed her in such calm contemplation it had blood fizzing in her ears. “This comes from being one of the two prized female Aal Shalaans, right?”
“Uh… what does?”
“The expectation that men will do your bidding. You’re used to saying ‘jump’ only for your male kin to ask ‘how high?’“
One thing for sure, she’d jump if only he said to. She’d stay in the air until he said down, too.
No need to tell him that just yet. For now, she’d let him believe she was an old hand at getting her way. If he believed she was more effective than she really was, it made it more likely she’d sway him, too. Good press was everything, after all.
She smiled. “Invite me in, Rashid.”
“That’s an ill-advised demand, princess.”
“Will you stop with this ‘princess’ business? You’d better, if you don’t want me to ‘sheikh’ you.”
“‘Sheikh’ away. Boundaries are essential.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Can we take our boundaries inside? I’m dying for a cup of tea. I promise to make you one.”
“I don’t drink tea.”
He didn’t, huh? She might just discover he didn’t eat food, either, his sustenance being evil souls. And he’d already gorged on four for dinner.
“You must have other beverages in your place.”
“Tap water.”
Her lips twisted. “You won’t put me off, you know.”
“I’m stating facts.”
“Next you’ll say you have nothing to eat but dried dates.”
His shrug should have been immortalized on video as the template for nonchalance. “It’s not far from the truth.”
Water and dates, huh? The sustenance of desert nomads. It actually fit that he, having lived years in survival mode through hardships and deprivation the likes of which she couldn’t imagine, would be programmed to exist on the bare necessities. Even now that he was a billionaire, he hadn’t gone soft or become dependent upon modern comforts and conveniences. He might drive a car only his kind of money could buy, but he reverted to his adversity-thriving true self in a heartbeat.
We remain who we are, no matter where we are.
And who he was, was the best thing she’d ever known.
She grinned into his brooding eyes. “Water and dates work for me.”
“Fine. You can come in.” Not much of an invitation, but she’d take it. She was sizzling with eagerness to. At least, she was before he doused it. “Until your escort arrives.”
Before she could object, he was out of the car in yet another impossibly effortless move.
Her exit wasn’t as graceful, nor was her progress to catch up with him at the door of what looked like a deserted warehouse below an equally empty, old, industrial-looking brick building.
As he pointed a remote at the huge steel door, she nodded at the deserted area. “See this? There’s no one around like there always is in our region. No malicious eyes to monitor my visit or wagging tongues to weave it into a scandal. Why are you worried?”
“Why aren’t you?”
“Because I can’t worry about anything with you around. Because I feel safer with you than I ever did in my life. Why else?”
Another episode of inertness descended on him. She was quickly learning that indicated astonishment. Even shock.
His next words reinforced that belief, his eyes narrowing a fraction. “You believe I pose no danger of any sort?”
“Definitely not to me.” The words were out before she realized he might mean a different kind of danger… the sexual kind.
If only. With this avenging archangel, she was safer in that arena than she was in her currently all-female environment. A depressing thought if any ever was.
He pressed the remote and the door opened with the whirr of a perfectly oiled machine, belying its weather-beaten appearance.
Before he turned away, he belatedly commented on her wholehearted assertion. “Interesting.”
You can say that again, she thought, watching the receding streetlights paint shadows across his back as he forged deeper into the darkness, a sorcerer becoming one with his lair.
He left the lights off. On purpose, she was sure, to rattle her. Punishing her for behaving so “inappropriately”?
Too bad for him it wouldn’t work. Not only did she have no fear of darkness, it was true she’d fear nothing with him by her side. Maybe they did lack some knowledge of one another that closer interaction would have fostered, but she did know the essential him. His essence had touched hers so profoundly that he starred in her very first memory.
Deciding to call him out on his efforts to intimidate her, she said, “Let there be light, Rashid. Only so neither of us breaks a toe against a cabinet or something.”
At her mockery, there was light. Not a sudden burst, but a dawning of golden, sourceless illumination so gradual her vision didn’t have to adjust to take in her surroundings. A vast, 50-foot-ceilinged warehouse-to-loft conversion. There was one word for it: Spartan. She now truly knew what the word meant. It was this: a warrior’s dwelling. Sparse, utilitarian, austere. It was also more. A piece of ancient Azmahar, before oil and technology had transformed its distinctive heritage into yet another twenty-first-century Westernized hybrid. Every line and surface, and what little furniture there was, was steeped in Azmahar’s history, bearing the stamp of its authenticity in a muted palette of desert-inspired tones.
“Of course.” She realized she’d said that out loud when he turned to her. “Now that I’ve seen this place, I realize nothing else—and nothing less—could have suited you. Or… contained you.”
“Contained me?” His gaze swept the place before he leveled that bone-melting stare back on her. “Quite the bottle, isn’t it?”
A laugh burst out of her. “You do fit the genie profile. Especially with the way you materialized out of thin air tonight.”
Shrugging out of his coat, he moved deeper into the huge space. “I’m sure that satisfies your sense of dramatic license far more than the mundane explanation.”
Removing her coat as well and following him farther into the room, she faced him as he stopped before a fireplace and held out her arms for the logs he’d picked up. “I’ll do that. You sit down.”
“So it’s not ‘jump’ this time, but ‘sit,’ eh? What next? Roll over? Beg?”
A chuckle bubbled out as she tried to imagine him doing any of that. But the funny actions only turned to licentious images in her head. Oh, the images.
Trapping a moan, she grinned. “Maybe. And maybe I’ll ask you to jump to that mezzanine. I bet you can jump tall buildings in a single bound. But even superheroes need to put their feet up once in a while. As you’re going to do tonight.”
Without a shadow of a smile in return, he handed her the logs and left her to start a fire. He sank down on top of a woolen kelim woven in Azmahar’s national colors and motifs. Leaning on one of two huge complementing cushions, he proceeded to watch her like a black panther would contemplate a contrary gazelle.
His gaze made her more distressed with each breath; its touch unleashing impulses she’d believed would be forever banked with him forever out of her life.
As he would be after tonight.
But tonight was still here. As was she. And she would make the most out of this windfall.
With the fire going, she turned to him. “You’re hungry.”
“I am?”
“Judging by your size and muscle mass, you must require quite a lot of sustenance frequently. It’s been almost four hours since you came to my rescue. So yes, you’re hungry now.”
It could have been the play of firelight. But she could swear an obsidian flame started flickering in the depths of his eyes.
He inclined his head, casting his face in deeper shadow, depriving her of closer investigation. “So you don’t just order your males around, you tell them how they feel, too.”
“‘My males?’“ A laugh overcame her. “Ya Ullah, what a concept.” His intensity ratcheted up until she had to look away, had to walk to the open-plan kitchen at the far end of the gigantic space. “So… food. Please tell me I’ll find something more than water and dates in there.”
“I can still call someone to follow you home now rather than later.”
“No, thanks.” Arriving at the kitchen, she looked around. “You weren’t exaggerating, were you? No fridge? So how do you eat? Out? Or do you exist on takeaway? Or have a cook come in regularly?”
“No cook. I get fresh ingredients delivered daily, use them up, rinse and repeat.”
That actually sounded like a very healthy way to live. He was the picture of vigor and virility, so he was doing it right. Very.
She leaned across the island, luxuriated in watching him coming closer. “So where’s today’s consignment?”
He stopped before her. “I intended to have dinner out.”
“Until me.”
“Until you.”
The way he said those words… Was there tenderness in his tone, or was it her imagination again?
She cleared her tight throat. “So how am I supposed to feed you? You don’t even have dates, do you?”
“I have all kinds of dried fruits.” He pointed toward the cupboards behind her.
“I can use those. For dessert. For the main course, I bet you can get anything delivered at any time.”
He brooded at her for what felt like an hour.
Her gaze began to waver. He was going to outstare her and…
He suddenly looked heavenward, as if asking the fates just what they’d thrown in his path tonight. Then he inhaled sharply, exhaled as forcefully.
Wow. She’d done it. She’d dragged a full-blown reaction out of him. A human one, to boot.
Her internal celebration hiccupped as he recaptured her in the crosshairs of his focus. “Fine. I’ll have whatever ingredients you require delivered. What do you want to feed me?”
She barely managed not to jump and pump a fist into the air.
Another minibattle won!
Her smile was so wide she doubted her lips would revert to their former size. “What do you want to eat?”
In response, he produced his cell phone, called someone named Ahmad then handed her the phone.
As he walked away he said over his shoulder, “Surprise me. You’re superlative at it, after all.”
Surprise had long given way to ever-expanding disbelief as Rashid watched Laylah prowling all over his place, “taking care of him.” She was now in his kitchen again, preparing him dessert.
This was not going according to plan.
Why was he letting her do this to him? He should be the one setting the pace, calling the shots.
Yet, since she’d pounced on him with her scarf and concern in that alley, he’d been letting her steer him. And this alien experience of being taken care of only got more… incapacitating.
No one had ever done anything like this for him, to him. He’d never let anyone near enough to even try. Not even Haidar and Jalal. He’d once rejected all their efforts to impose their brand of caring on him. He’d since lived happily alone.
Zain. So “happily” didn’t apply. He had no idea what happiness was. He’d heard people describe it. He’d observed them living it. It was what Haidar and Jalal appeared to be eyeballs-deep in now, with their brides. He’d never experienced anything remotely resembling their conditions and he’d been fiercely thankful for that. They’d been… compromised. Their power was no longer their own; their priorities forever messed up. He’d been unwavering in his belief that he wasn’t equipped to succumb to anything like that so-called happiness, that there was nothing to jog his ironclad order and intentions. Happiness, and everything else that people wanted, was for other men. Men with no mission.
Then tonight had happened. She had happened.
Laylah Aal Shalaan. This… shock.
Instead of the self-centered and self-serving spoiled witch he’d expected her to be, a budding edition of her black-hearted mother and aunt, there was this… being who seemed to exude a pristine nature and an overwhelming generosity of spirit. He’d spent the past hours looking for chinks in her act. He’d found none.
So he was floundering. Not only because she was not following the script he’d had in mind but because he wasn’t.
He kept doing the opposite of what he’d intended to do. He kept doing everything in his power to sabotage his own plans.
Instead of grabbing this opportunity that had hurled itself at him, he’d found himself shaking it off as if it burned him. He’d done everything to push her away, when he’d been following her for weeks, planning how to get close. She’d had to push him and pull at him until he’d let her come here. When he should have suggested it, or at least not fought against it with all he had.
But he had fought her every step of the way, his resistance becoming fiercer the more she’d clung. He’d tried all he could to talk her out of giving him what he’d planned to manipulate her into.
So no, nothing was going as planned. Everything was going far better than anything he’d dared hope for.
And that more than disturbed him.
He’d never been in a situation like this. He always had a plan, then followed it to the last meticulous detail. Whenever he seemed to be improvising brilliantly, he was only following one of the contingencies he’d made allowances for.
The only time he hadn’t done that to the letter, he’d almost paid with his life. He had paid with his mutilation.
Even then, he hadn’t veered off his planned course that far. He’d never let anything or anyone sabotage his plans that much.
But she was doing so by setting his plans on hyperdrive. What he’d hope to achieve in weeks had been condensed into hours. He hadn’t needed a strategy to get her where he wanted her. He was the one who needed to come to terms with how fast his plan was working when he hadn’t even meant to initiate it. He was the one who was wondering what had hit him. The one who had to struggle to catch his breath.
Her enthusiasm might turn out to be as deleterious to his plans as her flat-out rejection could have been. Being so uncharted and unpredictable, it could prove even more catastrophic.
His heart thudded as she flashed him a smile before resuming her work, humming some merry tune.
Maybe he was overthinking it. Maybe he should not question his good luck.
But how could he not? Nothing like this had ever happened to him. He’d never been exposed to anyone like her. Was it any wonder he had no skill set in place to handle it or her?
And that was why he was succumbing to her coddling. He kept searching through his head for a method to regain control of the situation. But he found no precedent with which to deal with her.
The paradox was that she was overriding him with the sheer force of her… openness, her guilelessness. Her eagerness. Three qualities he had no experience with.
He should be using her willingness to do anything for him, her unwillingness to leave him, to his advantage.
Yet said advantage was the last thing on his mind. Thinking at all wasn’t among his capabilities right now. His faculties were all engaged in surrendering to whatever she wished to do, for him, to him. In dreading the time when she had to leave.
These unknown reactions could be due to blood loss after all. Or the brush with resurrected insanity.
He watched her move toward him, her undulations the essence of femininity, yet not in the least studied, as spontaneous as everything else about her. Her face was open for him to read, the smile that spread those full, flushed lips transmitting something he’d never thought to see. Pure pleasure at being with him. And it wasn’t gratitude. It was far more. He couldn’t think how this could be.
But why think? Or analyze why she wanted to be here, why he wanted her here? Why everything was going so perfectly? It was an alien concept, but maybe he should just go along with it.
Maybe this time, having his original plan destroyed wouldn’t end in disaster.
“I’ve discovered one thing you’re not superlative at!”
At her triumphant declaration, Rashid raised his eyes in utmost deliberateness from the bowl he’d just wiped clean.
Anyone would have quaked under the impact of his gaze.
Laylah did quake. With an excitement that was getting harder to contain. Being with him was like being hooked to a source of inexhaustible energy. Like being infused with a narcotic, an upper. She did feel high. On him. On life, now that he was near.
Her delight had soared as she’d engaged him in repartee until the delivery of her requested items, then as she’d prepared them. When he’d sauntered into the kitchen and started working alongside her, she’d run to fetch a cushion, placed it where she’d have the best view of him and patted it. He’d stood there staring at that cushion, the picture of disbelief.
When he’d finally grumbled that this was worse than black ops conditioning, she’d spluttered in laughter. Hilarity had become fierce sweetness as that indomitable force had sat down where she’d indicated, letting her have this pleasure.
And pleasure it had been, the likes of which she’d never experienced. She’d never enjoyed cooking as she had for him, never enjoyed eating as she had with him. And then there had been the delight of watching him devour everything she’d prepared, and listening to his rumbles of enjoyment as he’d demolished the honey-glazed salmon, sautéed vegetables and avocado-based salad.
He’d just finished the khoshaaf she’d made soaking dried fruits in honeyed water and topping them with toasted almonds and spices. He’d scooped the last drops of syrup as if he’d coax the bowl to give up more, showing her how much he wished there was. He’d been vocally appreciative of her effort and not a little stunned at her skill. He’d admitted he’d thought he’d have to suffer ingesting whatever she’d imagined passed for cooking and be done with it. As it was, he could have eaten ten times as much. Not that he’d accepted second helpings. He’d insisted he never ate that much at a time, nor that elaborately.
Every word, no matter how it betrayed his preconceptions of her, had been a caress to her heart.
Now he was waiting for her to qualify her statement that there was something he wasn’t perfect at.
“Math,” she elaborated. “You counted the ‘prized female Aal Shalaans’ wrong. I’ve been one of three for a while now.”
Those divinely sculpted lips curled on that pout/twist combo that made her inside quiver. Her fingers itched to explore their dips and swells, her lips their…
He interrupted the cascade of imagery. “Aih, since discovering that Aliyah, now queen of Judar, is one. I hear she, too, had perfected the art of twisting untwistable men around her little finger.”
That, too, made her smile widen. “If you mean King Kamal, the twisting is mutual, I assure you.”
His gaze was dismissal itself. “Whatever you say.”
She took the bowl from his relaxed hands. “Why count on my word? One look at them would tell you they’re both equally smitten.”
Leaning back against the wall at the dining area—another floor arrangement with only a tubbleyah, a one-foot-high, unfinished-wood, round table, another keleem and a couple more megacushions—he crossed now-bare feet at the ankles. “Women of Aliyah’s caliber can wreak untold havoc. But she must have her hard life to thank for her ability to rein in her lethal potential. Her family’s indulgence was so misguided that it almost destroyed her body and mind. After struggling to overcome the damage they did, she must have learned control, not to mention compassion for others. That makes Kamal one lucky wretch.”
His eyes challenged her to find a credible answer to his evaluation.
Instead, she held her hand down to him.
His gaze moved to it but he did not take it.
Not willing to accept a hand up from her? Guess she’d pushed her luck again, this time right into his comfort zone.
Hand prickling with the letdown, she withdrew it—only for it to be snagged in a vise of sheer power: his warm, beautiful, tough hand.
A thousand sensations coursed through her. Tears prickled behind her eyes at the exquisiteness of each.
Earlier, he’d had to touch her. This was his first voluntary touch, an answer to her request to let her closer. An acceptance she’d only dreamed of having. Every impulse strained to pull that hand that had been bruised in her defense to her lips, to worship every knuckle and callus.
A gasp escaped from her throat, as without tugging on her, just by tightening his grip, he was on his feet, towering over her. He was so close—his heat and scent flooded her, his aura cloaked her. For a haywire series of heartbeats she thought he’d…
He only stood there, looking down at their joined hands.
Then he raised them along with that delightful eyebrow. “Where do you want me now?”
Anywhere. Everywhere. As long as you’re in my life.
Good thing she wasn’t that candid. Not yet. No need to scare the poor man this early on.
Showing him where she wanted him for now, she led him back to the fireplace. Once he was seated again, she ran to the kitchen and brought him a mug of hot hibiscus tea, which he accepted with a direct gaze that she now knew meant he found no point in resisting anymore and would let her run her coddling routine with no more objections. If he’d had hair for her to ruffle, she would have ventured to do so.
She settled for a teasing smile as she sat beside him. “I’ve heard of being damned by faint praise, but you damn by the fervent variety. You included me when you mentioned women of a certain ‘caliber,’ right? And analyzing why Aliyah didn’t become a weapon of mass destruction was your roundabout way of telling me that because I was spoiled rotten, I remain deadly?”
He raised his mug to her in salutation of her accuracy. “If the roundabout way offends you, my apologies.”
Her head pitched back on a laugh. His wit, what he let her see of it, tickled her. What would it be like fully unleashed?
“Apologies will only be accepted if you stop burning calories skirting issues. It’s all I’ll ever ask of you, to be truthful with me. Always. I will never be anything but that with you.”
It was a long moment before he raised his eyes from the steaming depths of his drink. “If you think you can handle it.”
“Oh, you have no idea what I can handle.” She gave him a quirked eyebrow. “I hope you can take it as well as dish it out?”
“What do you think?” Those black lasers he had for eyes told her exactly what to think. “But I attempted a watered-down approach for my own sake. I hear your species subsists on a steady diet of fawning and flattery, and I wasn’t up to saving you again if an injection of the truth sent you into anaphylactic shock.”
At her hoot of delight, he continued watching her over the rim of his mug, taking more tranquil sips.
Wiping away tears, she rose to her knees, facing him. “Sir, you misjudge my species. Understandable, since it’s undocumented with me as its only member. The fluke female Aal Shalaan. Of which you know nothing, according to you. I guess all knowledge is on my side. I bet you never noticed I existed before tonight.”
A bolt of black lightning arced from his eyes.
Did that mean he had noticed her? When? How hadn’t she noticed, when she’d been analyzing his every nuance, scavenging for any sign of interest or attention?
She let out a choppy exhalation. “So you noticed me? And still think I was indulged? What on earth did you observe in my family’s treatment of me that could have been mistaken for indulgence? You thought my mother keeping me practically on a leash was that? Or my father making any excuse he could think of to escape giving me five minutes of his time? Or both using me as a pawn in their maneuvers with everyone else or a weapon in their own ongoing war?”
He frowned. She hadn’t seen him do that when he’d been about to kill her attackers; then, she had only seen that scarily empty expression.
But now she felt something emanating from him, far deadlier than the rage he’d exuded earlier tonight.
Wow. Was this in response to her account of how her parents had treated her? She hadn’t meant to sound bitter, but in reality, she’d “watered things down.” Not that she’d thought to appeal to his sympathy. Whatever she’d suffered at her parents’ self-serving hands had been nothing compared to what he’d suffered.
Needing to lighten the mood, she infused her voice with extra lightness. “Or maybe you believed I was indulged because my legions of cousins didn’t rough me up like they did each other? That had nothing to do with my being female, just being the youngest.”
As if consenting to play along, his lips twisted. “I didn’t see those who succeeded you to that position being spared, since these were disappointingly male. You can’t deny the Aal Shalaans’ situation goes against everything our region believes in. Instead of valuing males above females for offspring, having nothing but sons made the Aal Shalaan males a dime a dozen, and a female a treasure. Your aunt Bahiyah was that for decades. Then came you.”
Her hairs stood on end at the way he said those words. It got worse when he leaned closer, and she was hit with another wave of his vigor and virility.
He only placed his empty mug on the floor between them. “It’s the one thing that made your family tolerate your Hydra of a mother. That she managed the miracle of giving the Aal Shalaans a female child.”
She grimaced. “Hydra, huh? Ouch.” Then she laughed. “But, yeah, apt description. Though in anything else, you must be talking about an alternate universe. In this one, I never noticed any tolerance toward my mother. Not that I blame anyone for that. My mother, as you so bluntly noted, is intolerable. I also never had any evidence that I was such a big deal to the family for achieving the feat of being born female. In fact, I mostly experienced the opposite. Being the lone estrogen bubble floating in an ocean of testosterone was no fun.”
A contemplative look greeted her words. “I expect it must have had its drawbacks.”
Her laugh was mirthless this time. “For my first decade I couldn’t understand that I wasn’t a boy, then I wouldn’t accept I wasn’t, tried my best to be one, so I’d fit in. My mother did her best to flog me, emotionally and sometimes physically, out of my efforts. Then puberty hit and I began to feel some good sides to being a girl.” Like growing a whole new appreciation of his masculine wonder. “But those did not outweigh the bad. I was such a disappointment to everyone. Not male, so couldn’t be shoved into the roles in need of a steady supply of Aal Shalaans, and not the type of female they had in mind. The older I got, the more disgusted with me my mother and aunt became for not inheriting their refined genes, for manifesting the looks and temperament of the Neanderthal-like Aal Shalaans. I was ‘tainted’ by my Aal Shalaan blood, as my mother put it when she was trying to ‘cleanse’ me of its disadvantages. And though I cleaned up good when they had their way with me, when left to my own devices, I slipped back into my graceless, disgraceful self. Not that they gave up. They kept hoping that through constant pressure they’d prove the ancient proverb right.”
“Which proverb is that?”
“Ekfi’l edrah ala fommaha, tet’la el bent l’ommaha.”
“Set the cauldron on its face, after mother the girl takes.”
She whooped. “And it almost rhymes, too.”
He tutted. “Almost doesn’t count. Either it rhymes, or it’s lame. That was lame.”
Another man would have accepted her praise of his translation. He’d accept nothing he hadn’t fully earned. The self-made, self-sufficient entity that he was would care nothing about others’ approval, anyway.
She waved his dismissal away. “Details. It was good enough. And clever. Not to mention instantaneous.”
Not one to continue a subject he’d already dismissed, his gave her what felt like a mind and soul scan. “So your mother and aunt couldn’t ‘turn’ you.”
A chuckle overcame her. Yes, he was disparaging her family, but he did it deliciously, not to mention accurately. “Like vampires would, huh? Another spot-on analogy, sorry to admit. And nope. To their escalating frustration, I remained an inferior human with loads of abhorrent failings that made them break out in hives. The worst of it was the traits you had a demonstration of tonight.”
Was that teasing that simmered in the blackness of his eyes? Was it even possible?
“Being overriding and unstoppable?”
“Hah. They’d have a stroke if they heard anyone describe me as that. Their dissatisfaction with me was based on what they said formed the foundation of my character. In their words, a ‘total lack of discretion, insight and shrewdness and a genetic absence of poise, presence and influence.’“
Yep, she’d memorized the slurs. They’d been said in too many variations often enough.
His eyes told her he’d made a note of that fact. “It’s clear they didn’t know you well.”
Her lips relaxed, as did her heart. “Do you mind if I take that as a compliment?”
A perfectly formed hand—strength, skill and command wrapped in bronze and adorned by raven silk—waved her a knock yourself out. What she’d give to know those hands better.
Pulsuz fraqment bitdi.