by Lora Leigh
Instead, she dropped her arms, her hands clenching into the the couch cushions as she leaned forward, her own anger surging inside her.
“Do you realize I’ve lost my job because of this mess?” she snapped back at him. One hand lifted to wave at his room to emphasize the situation. “I haven’t worked in over two weeks now, I have bills to pay and responsibilities to meet. Do you think I was meeting those responsibilities by playing the cowering puppy at my brother’s home? Do you think my landlord is going to just nicely wait for me to pay my rent?”
“Since when did your parents refuse access to your trust fund, Paige?” His tone was chillingly uncompromising and unforgiving.
It was her own fault she had been taken and she knew it; she wasn’t trying to claim otherwise.
But he made her feel about two inches tall and responsible for the fall of the modern world with that look and tone.
“I didn’t say it was the smartest idea I’d ever had,” she burst out furiously. “But for God’s sake, Abram, it had been two weeks. Khalid and I were at each other’s throats and starting to go for blood. I just wanted to go home long enough to figure out how to handle him and his insistence on running my life.”
“And that did you how much good?” He grunted irritably as he shot her a look of complete male frustration. “You were being protected and you insisted on leaving that protection. Now you can settle in here for the next three weeks and twiddle your thumbs until I can send you home.” She stared back at him in shock. “Abram, I can’t stay here for three weeks,” she whispered. “I have to go home.”
“Khalid will take care of your bills and any problems that arise, and I’m certain he’ll have a nice little discussion with the owner of the company you worked for so you can return. You have no choice but to cooperate here, Paige. Attempting to make me feel guilty for your situation will do you no good.”
“You could send me home,” she retorted angrily.
“If I could send you home I’d have you on a transport now,” he snapped back as anger flashed across his face. “Unfortunately, that isn’t possible at the moment, trust me on this.” Her lips thinned as she glared back at him. “Then let me call Papa. He’ll come get me.”
“Oh, there’s a good idea.” His smile was tight and hard. “Let’s call Pavlos Galbraithe and have him arrive to antagonize Azir further.” His bark of laughter was filled with sarcasm. “I can see that one working out well.”
So, maybe that wasn’t the wisest course of action, but staying here for three weeks wasn’t acceptable either, not when old man Mustafa was bouncing around the place trying to find his little lost Marilyn.
The thought of it was sickening.
It sickened her and God only knew how her mother was feeling at the moment.
Raking her fingers through her hair she stared back at Abram in frustration, wondering where the heated, hungry lover of earlier had gone.
With that thought came another. Why, once she’d come until she thought she was going to die, hadn’t he taken her fully and achieved his own release?
“Do I have your agreement to behave?” he asked her.
“I agree to follow the rules I know about.” She shrugged. “But I think you know this is going to suck.”
“Sucking or not, that’s the way it is,” he informed her, his voice as hard as the black onyx of his gaze. “And sucking beats dying, wouldn’t you say?”
She had to look away from him.
She couldn’t imagine how he had survived within this world. He was a man who enjoyed tastes, textures, touch, and laughter. She couldn’t imagine there was much of a chance of those things existing in the cold, stone confines of this fortress.
Crossing her arms she rubbed at them, trying to bring a little warmth back to her body as a chill raced through her.
“Why did he do this?” she finally asked, wondering why his father would take a vendetta to this extreme.
“To punish Khalid for killing Ayid and Aman, no matter how they deserved it.” Regret and guilt flashed across his gaze. “To punish your mother for escaping and in an attempt to find something or someone that he believes is my weakness.”
“And of course, I’m no weakness of yours, am I, Abram?” The tone of his voice, the remoteness of his gaze as he spoke sent a spike of aching need tearing into her chest.
“I can’t afford a weakness.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, you can be used as one, simply because your presence here will be more of a temptation than I can resist. We learned that earlier, didn’t we?” He nodded to the disheveled bed where she had lain gasping for air as she orgasmed violently in his arms.
A flush washed over her face and she shot him a hateful look. “It’s not as though I tempted you too far,” she shot back. “You still haven’t…” She ran out of words, flushing heavier. It was much harder to say as she faced the distance he was placing between them.
His brow arched. “I still haven’t fucked you?” he murmured.
Her pussy just had to respond. It just had to clench and ripple and spill her juices, again, to saturate the bare, swollen folds.
She needed panties before the dampness began easing down her thighs. But at this rate, she would end up using all she had within hours.
She stared back at him though, holding his gaze despite the response that flooded through her and the anger beginning to build.
“I’ll get around to it,” he promised her. “I first wanted to make sure you were on birth control, and secondly—” His lips twisted ruefully. “I may not have come, Paige, but you had me so fucking hot I spilled myself in my pants. Something I promise you will not happen again.” His gaze flickered over her, heated now, aroused. “The next time, I’ll spill in that sweet tight pussy, or buried in the snug clench of your ass. Either way, I promise you’ll not doubt the fact that I’ve definitely taken you.”
“I don’t think so.” She had to draw in a hard, tight breath to push those words past her lips, because it truly was hard to deny what her body so wanted.
A single, black brow arched with an arrogance that set her teeth on edge.
“Not while we’re here, and not while you’re acting like my jailer rather than my lover,” she explained tightly, nerves trembling in her voice as she fought to keep it firm, strong.
The smile he gave her was triumphant, dominant. “We’ll see about that.” He held his hand up as her lips parted to deliver a blasting retort. “Before we get into this argument, Tariq will be bringing in our dinner any minute and I know your appetite is affected when you’re angry. Let’s enjoy our meal, Paige, then you can tell me the ways you’re going to resist my touch while you’re lying in the bed with me nightly.” He leaned forward then, his expression no longer distanced but suffused with sensual hunger. “Tell me, Paige, how will you resist when you’re lying not just with me, but with Tariq as well?
And the one thing I can promise you can have while you’re here is all the pleasure we can give you in that bed. More pleasure than you could ever imagine.”
Abram watched her face, her eyes. No matter the anger that could spike through Paige, it was her eyes that always told the truth of her emotions. The fear that had filled them as he forced himself to remain distant, to lay out the situation for her, had tightened his chest until he wondered that he could breathe for it.
But the minute he’d allowed his hunger to show, the only emotion, the only response he could give her, that fear had slid away and a matching, feminine need had blazed in her emerald eyes.
Sensual and warm, she was a woman willing to explore her hunger, but even more, she would be willing to explore his.
And before Tariq arrived with the meal he had prepared, he wanted her primed and ready for the hungers that raged through him. Knowing the situation, knowing from where the pleasure may well come later, would keep her off balance and hopefully, keep her too involved to attempt to escape before he and Tariq had a plan in place.
&nbs
p; Until then, he had to be certain that the line he was forced to teeter on didn’t shift on him. He had to ensure it didn’t throw him to the ground, broken and lost, again.
He’d been there once. He’d been at the precipice where nothing mattered but the blood of his enemies and the future was a vision he didn’t want to face. He’d already lost one woman whose life meant more to him than any of his brothers, his compatriots, and the men and women who had died, and would die, for the future they dreamed of.
He couldn’t let it happen again, because he might not manage to pull himself back again.
Azir had known that once Paige was here that she would become his main priority. Sometimes, Abram thought, the old bastard knew him better than he knew himself.
Azir suspected Abram’s plans for defection, but he didn’t know the plan he and Tariq were laying in to escape with the information they had amassed since Jafar’s arrival at the fortress.
As though his cousin’s presence was all it had taken, the roaches were coming out of the woodwork. Suspected militants and terrorist organizers were roaming the streets and discussing in public in small groups what should only be discussed behind closed doors and in secure bunkers.
But even more, Azir was braver, more confident and more secure now in acquiring the funds that had been frozen more than twenty years before.
As dinner was finished and Tariq cleared away the dishes and prepared coffee behind a screen at the small kitchenette Abram had had installed, he leaned back in his chair and watched as Paige wandered back to the fire.
She was nervous. Not frightened, and definitely not really wary, but she was nervous, her senses hyped and adrenaline coursing through her body.
She was trying to ignore both of them and to ignore the declaration he had made earlier.
He almost grinned as he considered the night ahead. He had no intentions of taking her yet, not yet. There were a few matters that had to be taken care of first, and precautions established to ensure their safety before he and Tariq took her together.
The hunger for it was beginning to build in him though, and he could see it building in Tariq.
They’d shared enough women, seduced enough to know each other’s responses as well as their woman’s.
“Azir and Jafar have made plans to take a ride in the morning,” Tariq told him as he carried the coffee back to the table. “They believe you and I will be too distracted to know that they’ve left.” Tariq nodded to Paige.
“Do you know where they’re going?” Abram lifted the cup to his lips as he murmured the question.
Tariq gave a quick shake of his head. “The equipment in Jafar’s room is just as good as ours, but I wasn’t close enough to the door to hear everything being said.”
“You know who to contact.” Abram dropped his voice as he spoke. The room was equipped with audio detection scramblers but he didn’t like taking chances. “If there’s a way to follow them, then he can figure it out.”
Abram frowned thoughtfully. Azir and Jafar had been bitter enemies until the months before Ayid and Aman had attempted to murder Khalid and Abram. Now, less than three months after the deaths of his youngest sons, Azir was conspiring with his nephew. The nephew whose father Azir had murdered more than twenty years ago.
“He definitely kidnapped her just to distract you,” Tariq stated as he nodded to Paige. “If we’re trying to protect her then we’re not following him. And he knows you’d never leave her here alone.”
“I wouldn’t trust her safety to just one of us either,” he said quietly. “Not this close.” That was the catch. They were a team, and they had been working efficiently together for several years. But now, with Paige here, it would be impossible for Abram to be confident that either of them could protect her alone if Azir conspired against them.
If his cruelty extended to having Paige taken and circumcised as Ayid had had his manservant’s wife circumcised several years before. Or if the authorities arrived to have her—or all three of them—arrested for depraved or indecent sexual acts.
Azir wasn’t above either of those, or any other number of extreme acts to keep Abram from leaving Saudi Arabia.
“He doesn’t know we have help. At least in following him,” Tariq murmured as he leaned closer.
Eyes in the sky were what they had. A little help from their friendly neighborhood CIA asset. In the event of an extreme emergency, that asset could get them out of the fortress and to an extraction point, but it wouldn’t be easy. It would compromise positions and covers and that was something no one wanted to do unless they simply had no other choice.
If Azir moved in a direction that would compromise Paige’s safety, or her life, then he would call them in, and it was that simple.
If he had time.
Abram glanced at her again, the fiery red-gold of her hair as it spilled around her shoulders, the relaxed position of her body indicating she was at the least, dozing.
As the day had worn on, Paige had become worn out. The drug used on her, the confrontation and abuse inflicted by Azir, and the stress of the day had culminated into complete exhaustion.
“Azir timed this personally,” Tariq stated as he followed Abram’s look. “And the perfect weapon to strike against you. How did he know?”
Tariq watched Abram, seeing the normally hardened expression as it softened almost imperceptibly. For the first time in far too many years, he was watching a woman affect Abram, and that scared the hell out of him. Because now just wasn’t the time for this.
“Who the hell knows how he found out.” Abram breathed out roughly. “But he did, and now we have to deal with it.”
“Do you have a plan?” Tariq asked, nodding toward Paige as her head slipped deeper into the cushion behind her.
“Keep her safe and alive,” Abram stated roughly as he turned back to his coffee and sipped at the brew. His expression remained savagely intense. “Stay one step ahead of Azir where she’s concerned and make certain he doesn’t get the jump on us. Until we can get her out without compromising our contacts, then we have no other choice.”
“And if we can’t?” Tariq had a feeling he knew the answer to that question.
“If we can’t then all bets are off.” The look Abram turned on him was more than savage now, it was primal, murderous.
Tariq barely controlled a flinch as he stared back into pure black icy rage. And he couldn’t say he blamed Abram. He’d lost too much in the years past, had watched too many hopes and dreams fall at his feet and buried too many friends, as well as two too many wives, one of which had owned him as much as any young man could be owned.
Abram wasn’t a young man anymore though. He was an adult in his prime, and the heart he possessed was a man’s heart, with all its scars and driving hungers.
It was one Tariq understood, because he too possessed such a heart.
Glancing at the young woman Azir had ordered him to aid Abram in pleasing, he wondered if sharing a woman with another man would always tempt him. Would the day come when he would come to crave his own woman, his own life? Or would his own scarred soul refuse to give the world enough trust to love again?
“When she turned eighteen she asked me if I’d ever love again.” Abram drew his attention back.
The look on his cousin’s face was remote, but his eyes were alive with the memories of the pain he had suffered. “Aleya had just died with our child.” He shook his head with a quick, rough movement.
“I told her only if hell froze over.”
But Abram loved the girl now sleeping in his room, Tariq thought. He wouldn’t admit it, not yet, but it was there in his eyes.
“And what would you tell her now?” Tariq asked, suddenly wishing he could have slipped some of Khalid’s fine whiskey into the fortress.
If ever a man needed a drink, it was now.
Abram finished his coffee and rose to his feet before answering. “I would tell her I wouldn’t dare tempt fate a
third time,” he whispered, his voice as tortured as Tariq knew his soul was. “I don’t think I could survive it again.”
Abram moved to the couch then, picked his delicate lover up in his arms, and carried her to the huge, custom-made bed at the other end of the room. It was conveniently situated close to the hidden door that led beneath the harem and into an underground cavern at the base of the mountains beyond.
A tunnel they both prayed no one else had found in the years since Abram had. They suspected not, or else Azir would have had it filled in and destroyed like the others that had been discovered.
His harem had once been sacred to him. Until he had lost the funds the government once paid him and no longer had the gold or American cash to pay for the kidnappings or the American women occasionally auctioned off in the slave markets.
