by Olivia Gates
Perfect teeth sank into his lip, making her feel they’d sunk into hers again. “I prefer to dwell on when you said yes.”
She ignored the tingling of her lips. “Only to follow it with a resounding no, when I came to my senses. Now you’re using an impending war to reintroduce the subject? Since it’s not faulty memory, I assume these are your new orders?”
Something blipped in his gaze. It was gone before she could fathom it. But even that much from him was telling. He was taken aback and clearly had no idea that she was onto him.
Infusing her tone with all the cool derision she could, she cocked her head at him. “This surprises you? Hmm, maybe I must reconsider all I heard about your reputation as a know-it-all spymaster. Anyway, if you’re still not sure what I mean... Yes, I do know. Everything.”
Three
She knew. Everything.
For stunned moments that was all that filled Mohab’s mind. Then alarm diminished and questions crowded in its place.
What was “everything” according to her? Whatever she thought that was, could that be the reason behind her sudden rejection six years ago?
He stared at her as she stood safe feet away, tall and majestic in a cream skirt suit that made her skin glow, still the most magnificent thing he’d ever seen. Even more than he’d remembered. And he’d thought he remembered everything about this woman whose memory had refused to relinquish its hold over him, whose feel still seethed beneath his skin, whose taste still lingered on his tongue.
But he’d come here today hoping what he remembered had been exaggerated, that his many sightings of her during the past years had perpetuated the delusion, that one up close look would dissipate it.
Then he’d walked into Kamal’s stateroom, and one look at her had dashed any hopes he’d ever entertained of finally purging her from his system. Everything he’d remembered about her had been diluted. Or maturity had only intensified her effect on him. He hadn’t meant to drown in her. But the years of separation, instead of dampening his responses, had only made it impossible for him to ration them.
His gaze swept her ripe curves. His every inch ached, remembering how they’d fit against his angles, how her supple softness had filled his hands, cushioned his hardness, accommodated his demand. His fingers buzzed as they relived skimming her warm, velvet skin, overflowing with her resilient flesh, winding in her silky, raven tresses. His lips and tongue stung with the phantom sensations of feeling hers again, hot and moist and fragrant, surrendering to his invasion, demanding his dominance.
He’d almost taken her, in a near-literal reenactment of their last time together, before saying one word to her. And how she’d responded. He’d felt her every inch vibrate to his frequency, every nerve resonate with his urgency. Even now, after she’d collected herself and retreated behind a barricade of cold contempt, he could still feel it seething. Her mind was another matter, though. If outrage could flay, he’d be minus skin now. He certainly felt as raw as if he was.
So was her rage a reaction to his incursion, or did the developing situation only pile on top of the “everything” she claimed to know?
He could ask, since she seemed to be forthcoming all of a sudden. But he wasn’t here to dredge up the past. And if he could still just touch her and they’d both go up in flames, that was all he needed to know.
All he needed, period.
But she was waiting for him to make some kind of response to her revelation. He’d give her one, all right. Just not what she might expect.
He walked back to where she’d retreated. “So you know everything?” At her curt nod, he shoved his hands into his pockets so they wouldn’t reach for her again. “Let’s test this claim, shall we?”
That twist surprised her. Zain. Good. He shouldn’t be the only one not knowing if he was coming or going here.
He cocked his head at her. “Do you know that I committed a cardinal sin during that hostage crisis?”
The tangent seemed to confuse her.
When she answered, the modulated voice that had sung its siren song in his ear for years was lower, huskier. “If you mean killing, I know all too well. Those moments, when you stormed the conference hall with your black-ops team and took out our captors, is forever branded in my memory. I watched you...terminate six of our captors single-handedly, with a precision I only thought happened in movies.” Those slanting, dense eyebrows he’d loved to trace and lips drew together. “But I didn’t think you considered killing a sin. Not in your line of work.”
“Killing is my line of work. At least, it’s part of the job description. Though ‘killing’ isn’t what I call it. I prefer ‘eliminating lethal threats to innocents.’”
Her eyes turned a somber cognac as she nodded. She didn’t contest that he spoke the simple truth, that people like him were a necessity to control the monsters who roamed the earth. She’d obviously seen enough in her line of work to know that his extreme measures were indispensable at times. Just as they had been that day when she’d been taken hostage with five hundred others at that conference in Bidalya.
But she could have contradicted him to score a point. That she didn’t, that she remained objective even to the detriment of her own attack, thrilled him.
He sighed. “But the sin I committed had nothing to do with the violence I perpetrated. I committed the cardinal sin of my line of work.”
“How so?”
“I deviated from the plan, improvised. I could have gotten so many killed.”
Again, counter to his expectations, her eyes grew impassioned as she contradicted him, in his defense. “But you saved hundreds, all of us who remained. And you didn’t seem to be improvising. You acted with such certainty, such efficiency, it was as if everything had been rehearsed. To the point that it felt as if the captors themselves were playing an exact role in the sequence you designed.”
“If it seemed like that to you, it was because of my men’s outstanding skills, and because I managed to compensate on the fly. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t make a huge mistake.” Her eyes were puzzled but engrossed. He could tell that she couldn’t wait to see where he was taking this. “Do you remember what I did when we stormed in?”
She nodded stiffly, as if it still pained her to think of that harrowing time. And who could blame her? She’d watched three people get killed in cold blood as proof of their captors’ resoluteness. She’d once told him that knowing the true meaning of helplessness, failing to protect those people, had damaged her more than her fear of meeting the same fate.
“What do you remember?”
Her exquisite features contorted with the reluctance to conjure up the memories. Still, she answered, “It was so explosive, but I remember it frame for frame. You burst in while one of them was threatening Najeeb that he’d start blowing parts off him. Then I met your eyes across the distance and...and...”
“Go on.”
She swallowed. “You streaked toward me, blowing away those men left and right, and then you were in front of me—shielding me—as you and your team finished off the rest.”
“And that was my sin. Najeeb was my mission. And I took one look at you across that hall and made the instantaneous decision to save you first.”
Her eyes widened; her lips opened on a soundless exclamation. She’d evidently never thought to question what he’d done.
When she finally talked, her whisper was impeded. “But you blasted away the one who was threatening him as you ran to me. You gave no one a chance to use him as shield or to harm him.”
“I should have run to him, should have shielded him. As my crown prince, he should have been my only priority. Instead, I made that you.”
“But you managed to save him and everyone else.”
“Only because I managed to compensate, as I said. Najeeb could have gotten shot before I ended the threat to him. A
nd knowing full well the widespread damage his injury or death would have caused, retaliations that would have reaped far more than five hundred lives, I still risked that.”
Time seemed to stretch as bewilderment glimmered in her gemlike eyes.
She let out a shaky breath. “So what are you saying? That you took one look at me and were so bowled over you decided to risk everyone’s lives—including your own—for me?”
“No. That’s not what I’m saying. I was...bowled over a bit before that.”
He watched her mouth drop open. This was news to her. He’d never intimated that he’d seen her before that day. But he’d seen her over two years earlier, had searched her out many times afterward.
“But it was the first time I’d seen you!”
“I saw no upside in letting you see me, or in acting on my interest. You were, as you pointed out so many times when we were together, an Aal Masood...and I was an Aal Ghaanem. The Montagues and Capulets didn’t have a thing on our moronically feuding houses. I also didn’t think it would be wise or fair to ever involve a woman in my crazy existence.” He exhaled. “Then I saw you in danger and every rational thought flew out the window.”
Her eyes filled with so much; he struggled not to drag her to him and kiss them closed.
Then they emptied of everything, leaving only hardness. “Why are you telling me this now?”
He shrugged. “I am testing your claim that you know everything. I just proved that you don’t.”
“You proved only that you spin a good yarn. As I already knew you did. Is this one supposed to appeal to my ego?”
A mirthless huff escaped him. “You think I’m making this up? Why? To butter you up for my current purposes? I wish. As someone who knows what a bullet feels like ripping through my flesh, I would have preferred one to admitting how fallible I am, how unprofessional I was, how I risked everyone’s lives to protect a woman who didn’t know me...whom I believed could never be mine.”
Steel mixed with gold in her gaze, clearly not buying his admissions. Funny. If he’d ever thought he’d confess this to her, he wouldn’t have dreamed this would be her reaction.
Might as well confess the rest, let her make whatever she wished of it. “When I burst in and I met your eyes, saw that mixture of terror and courage and fury...I couldn’t imagine I wouldn’t be able to look in those eyes again, to get the chance to know you. My instincts took over...and I let them.”
She averted those eyes, depriving him of their touch. “Yet after you went to such lengths to save me, you didn’t follow up on your wish to ‘know’ me. Not for over a year.”
He exhaled heavily. “I might have saved the day, for you and for everyone else, but I knew how badly I messed up. I guess I was punishing myself for failing to fulfill my duty and couldn’t reward my failure by giving myself the gift of knowing you, the one behind my lapse.”
She raised her eyes, that derision back in full force. “So was it guilt that stopped you from giving yourself the ‘gift’ of knowing me, or was it that you didn’t think it ‘wise or fair’ to involve a woman in your crazy existence?”
“Both. And the family feud. Everything.”
“Then, a year later, you just decided to disregard all those overpowering reasons you had not to approach me. Once you made that first contact, you relentlessly courted me all the way to your bed. Then, before I could catch my breath, you pushed for marriage. And when I tried to slow things down, you pushed harder. And when I decided to put a stop to it, you threatened you’d slander me and destroy any man who came near me.”
He gritted his teeth on the memory of his despair, when he’d felt her slipping through his fingers. “These were my most indefensible moments. Trying to hang on to you, then going almost berserk when I couldn’t.”
“Yeah, sure,” she scoffed. “You lost control out of sheer emotion. That coming from the ice-cold man they sent after the Mata Haris of the world, to seduce, entrap and destroy them.”
It was his turn to blink in surprise. She knew that? How?
She elaborated on just how much she knew. “I’ve been told how you are the man to rely on when a woman is involved, the incomparable undercover agent no female can resist. You’re not only known as Al Moddammer, but Qatel an-Nesaa—the lady-killer. And you’re claiming you took one look at the twenty-year-old nobody I was, an obscure member of your family’s hereditary enemies, and couldn’t think straight on account of my irresistibility?”
He exhaled. “That does about sum it up.”
“Tut.”
That click of her tongue shot straight to his loins. Any second now he was going to ravish her again, come what may.
Unaware of his state, she went on, “I expected better from the ultimate secret-service weapon that you are. Some airtight premise, at least something more plausible. Seems I have to revise many things I believed about you. You do remember I prefaced this unfortunate encounter, before you took that detour into badly scripted drama, by mentioning that I know everything, don’t you?”
“Again I say I wish it was anything but the pathetic truth. So, against all my intentions, I find myself forced to ask, according to you, what is everything?”
Her eyes became icy embers. “Everything from the moment I went to meet Najeeb and found you waiting for me instead.”
* * *
Jala watched those eyes of his blaze at her declaration.
She’d never been able to decide when they were most hypnotic: when they glowed with a constant flame or when they fluctuated—as they’d been doing throughout this confrontation—their pupils expanding and constricting, giving the intense tawny irises the illusion of burning coals.
She’d dreamed of those fiery eyes, his voice, his touch, for over a year after the hostage crisis. And it had had nothing to do with his saving her life. He’d just...overwhelmed her. He’d melted her just by looking at her, just by being near. When feeling that way had been totally out of character for her. She’d been too mature for her age, as her brothers had always told her. Cerebral, almost jaded.
But Mohab...he had bowled her over. For over a year, she’d relived every single second of being pressed against the body he’d fearlessly offered as her shield. She’d suffocated with remembered terror that a bullet could tear through his perfection. Then she’d relived every second as he’d sheltered her away from the scene of carnage. But before she could have even a word with him, the Bidalyan government had bundled all the hostages, sending them back to their countries to close that case as quickly as possible.
For months afterward, she’d gone crazy trying to find out who he was. Until Najeeb, her fellow hostage, had sought her out.
Najeeb had been magnificent during the crisis. Levelheaded, fearless, shrewd, he’d managed their captors like a veteran used to being under fire. It was certain more people would have died if not for his intervention. He’d recognized her as the only one he could depend on and they’d forged an instantaneous bond, as if they’d always worked together, minimizing damages for two agonizing days.
Then one of their captors had cracked, started shrieking he’d blow bits off Najeeb, as the highest-ranking royal, so his father would pressure the Bidalyans to meet their demands faster. But just as the situation had escalated, Mohab had exploded onto the scene.
It had surprised her to find out from Najeeb that their savior had been the head of Saraya’s special forces, not Bidalya’s. Turned out Bidalya had ceded control of the hostage retrieval to Mohab so he’d be responsible for his crown prince’s fate, and because he was the best at what he did.
But finding out he was also Najeeb’s older paternal cousin had dashed even her fantasies. Najeeb could be her friend in spite of their families’ enmity. But friendship wasn’t what she’d wanted from Mohab. Not that she’d thought she’d see him again.
Then, one
day, he’d just appeared, instead of Najeeb, to escort her to her first award ceremony. She’d been so delirious with this windfall she hadn’t questioned how or why. Even when Najeeb had called, explaining the emergency that would keep him away for months and hadn’t mentioned sending Mohab, she hadn’t thought it odd. She’d taken everything Mohab had said as uncontestable truth.
That first evening had been magical, and he’d been the perfect companion. He’d suggested lunch the next day and she’d jumped at his invitation, had continued to grab every opportunity to be with him for the next two months, with Mohab showing her more facets of himself, each impossible to resist.
Not that resisting had been a consideration. Then, as if he’d known just when she’d become ready for more, he’d taken her to his penthouse, and then he’d taken her....
“Will you answer my question, or will you keep the ‘everything’ you know a mystery?”
His taunt pulled her out of the plunge into the past, which appeared to have been only a moment in real time.
She was loath to dredge up the sordid past, but she’d cornered herself into doing just that.
What the hell.
She leveled her best denigrating gaze on him. “How is it a mystery when we both know you only entered my life to eliminate me from Najeeb’s? That I was just another mission to Qatel an-Nesaa?”
Four
Jala watched his pupils expand until it looked as if his eyes were being engulfed by black holes.
He finally inhaled. “What’s the source of your info?”
“What do you think?”
“Najeeb.” It was a statement. “What did he tell you?”
“The truth.”
A long exhalation, then Mohab moved, brushing past her on his way to the couch. He sat down in one of those movements of pure power and grace. “I injured my knee in my last mission, so standing isn’t a favorite activity at the moment.” When she only stared down at him, he sighed. “I also pulled a muscle in my neck.”
