by Olivia Gates
But he’d been unable to stop following her after that first sighting. He’d known he’d never approach her, but she’d become his fantasy when he’d never had one before.
Then that hostage crisis had happened. Her name had been the only thing he’d seen on that hostage list before he’d stormed in, and he’d made the decision to save her first right then. Facing that had made him more enraged at himself, his anger mounting the more he found himself struggling not to go after her, and to hell with all the reasons to stay away.
“And you expect me to believe you were enthralled at first sight? A sight I didn’t even reciprocate?”
“Seems you never looked in the mirror.”
“C’mon...you have tons of gorgeous women littering your path, and I’m not even that. I’m too...androgynous.”
An incredulous laugh burst out of him. “Then I don’t know what that says about me, since you define femininity to me.” Before she ricocheted with another rebuttal, he cut her off. “Aren’t you going to hear my version of what happened?”
“Will you tell me Najeeb or I jumped to conclusions, or some other lameness like that? Don’t bother. I already told you I don’t care. It was just a welcome bit of news that made breaking up with you much easier.”
He had to accept that. It seemed he hadn’t realized how controlling his kind of life had made him, how severely allergic she had been, and still was, to any infringement on her free will. Her distress had been acute every time he’d pushed to announce their engagement. She’d kept saying she wanted more private time before their families and their feud infringed on their relationship. It seemed the more he tried to push for moving forward, the more she’d resented his attempts to herd her toward his objective. She would probably have ended it on that account alone. Her discoveries about his subterfuge had just rushed everything to its conclusion.
He patted the space beside him again. “You still need to know my side, just so you know ‘everything’ for real.”
She only flung a dismissing hand at him. “Suit yourself.”
“Thank you, Your Ungraciousness.” He bowed his head mockingly. “So...when my uncle assigned me the mission of sabotaging you and Najeeb, I pounced on it, but only as a pretext to finally approaching you. That alone made me wonder if you might be as dangerous as my uncle believed. After all, how could you be the sweet innocent I thought you to be if you affected me this way, when the world’s most lethal seductresses didn’t turn a hair in me? If I was so enthralled from afar, what chance did Najeeb have?”
He had approached her, hoping she’d turn out to be nothing like his fantasies and he could end her hold over him. Saving Najeeb would have been incidental.
But from that first night, he’d lost sight of the whole world in her company, then of his own reality in her arms. He’d forgotten who he was and what kind of life he led to the point he’d asked her to marry him.
“But you changed your mind once you were with me, right?”
“When I was with you I had no mind. But if anyone gets your reservations back then, it’s me. You had your reasons for shunning marriage, and I had mine.”
Not that his dread had stopped him from wanting to go through with it, from becoming progressively more impatient with her postponements, even when he hadn’t realized they’d been signs of trouble. This obliviousness had been why he’d been so shocked when she’d ended it. Then, after he’d found out why she hadn’t hooked up with Najeeb, she’d disappeared.
He’d turned the world upside down searching for her, to no avail. He’d only found her when she’d resurfaced on her own, following a yearlong humanitarian trek in uncharted areas in South America. He hadn’t let her out of his sight since.
And all the while, he’d been seeking a pretext to go after her again. Now that he’d finally found it, he would get her. She just didn’t know it yet.
He swept her in an aching glance. “But my proposal, as ill-advised as it was, was real.” At her disbelieving huff, his lips twisted. “Whatever you think I thought or felt, not even I can feign that much hunger, for that long or at all.”
“But men don’t have to feign anything. Put a willing woman in their bed and that’s all she wrote.”
“Your inexperience with anyone else but me is showing.” He rose, savoring every nuance of her chagrin at being unable to contest his exclusive ownership of her body. “Those indiscriminate men you describe are aroused by the novelty, the challenge. They are notorious for losing...steam quickly when with a familiar body, no matter how tempting. But the more I had you, the more my hunger for you raged. I craved you enough that I would have jumped into an inferno—or even into marriage—to keep you.”
“Then it’s fortunate Najeeb’s revelations pushed me to make the decision I’d been circling for a while, saving us both from a fate worse than hell.”
“I’m just telling you my side. And now that you’ve told me yours, I understand why you walked away. A combination of commitment phobia, resentment and outrage is pretty potent. You were doing what you believed was right for yourself. But that’s your mind. What about your body? How long did it ache in demand for mine? How severe were the withdrawal pangs?”
Something dark and enormous expanded in her eyes.
His heart hammered. Ya Ullah, was that...anguish?
The disturbing expression was gone before he could be sure he’d seen it. “I can tell you for a fact that for the next year there was no aching or withdrawal.”
That didn’t sound like a spiteful denial. She meant this.
Could it be she’d walked away at no cost to herself? There’d been no emptiness in her gut and loins, no burning in her senses and skin, needing his assuagement, his completion? Could the love she’d sobbed out loud in pleasure-drenched nights have evaporated so absolutely that not even a remnant of the physical yearning remained?
No. He wouldn’t buy that. She’d melted again at his touch. Her body still proclaimed him its mate and master.
As if to contradict his conviction, she said, “I haven’t had other men since because I was too busy with work, and I’m not the kind for one-night stands. It wasn’t because I was pining for you.”
“If you’d found the intensity of attraction and totality of arousal you had with me, you would have made time. But you wanted that or nothing at all. Sometimes hunger is so vast, nothing but what you crave would fulfill it.” Giving her no chance to back away, he took her in his arms. “I know, because nothing could fulfill my craving but you.”
“Yeah, sure.” She squirmed, only inflaming him more.
He hauled her tighter against him. “Fact is sometimes stranger than fiction. It was as unreal to me as it sounds to you now. This chemistry we share wasn’t only an aphrodisiac, but a mind-altering substance.”
“Sounds like something you wouldn’t want to abuse. So why are you doing this? Or are you just making the best of your ‘mission’ this time, too?’
“This time, it’s all me. How much has Kamal told you?”
Sullenly, she told him. Kamal had only told her the general situation, hadn’t even mentioned him by name. So he now filled in his part of the story, leaving out only that he could abort the hostilities without her marrying him.
She digested everything, inert in his arms, eyes somber. “So you’re going to be king. That’s unexpected. But it also enables you to resolve this without little Aal Masood me.”
Her analytical powers were unerring. As he well knew.
But he couldn’t corroborate her analysis or this was over before it began. “The peace through marriage is what my uncle would agree to.”
“How ironic. I was the only woman he couldn’t abide for his heir, now I’m the only one to serve his purposes.” She pushed away, hard. “He can go to hell, right along with you.”
He hated to play this card, b
ut he’d run out of options. “You once said you would repay me one day.”
That made her go rock still, a world of reproach filling her cognac eyes. “I also said I won’t do that with my life.”
“I’m not asking for your life. Just your hand in marriage. Just your body in my bed.”
A scoff burst from her. “My choice, my future and my body. That just about wraps up what makes up my life.”
He shrugged. “Not really.”
“Oh? What else is there that you’re not laying claim to?”
“Plenty. Your heart, your mind, your soul.” At her immovable glare, he found no recourse but to push. “I am collecting my debt now, Jala. It is that imperative.” For him.
Apprehension gradually replaced ire on her exquisite face.
Then she finally exclaimed, “You’re all really going to do something insane if we don’t get married?”
And he seized that first wavering in her resolve, drove his advantage home. “We have to get married. Nobody said we have to stay married.”
Five
Jala couldn’t believe it.
That gargantuan weasel had made her say yes.
He’d used his every weapon, from seduction to logic to cajoling, playing havoc with her vulnerabilities and convictions, making her revoke her edict consigning him to hell.
But then, the situation was dire.
From her work in regions festering with conflict, she was too familiar with how wars ignited over much less than the current stakes. In places like their region, where pride and tribalism and other inherited, obsolete conventions still ruled to a great degree beneath the modernized veneer, once blood was spilled, enmities could—and did—rage for centuries.
Kamal and Mohab, damn them both to hell, had pegged her accurately. They’d both counted on her inability to stand by and let something like this happen if she could help it. They’d known that after her first shock and outrage, once she realized it was true only she could help, she would.
But she drew the line at marrying Mohab to do it. The best she’d do was agree to a fake engagement.
Yeah, another one. But one she knew was fake. She’d go through the motions for the sake of peace.
And that was huge of her. Engagements around here were excruciating, rife with maddening customs and obscene intrusions. Wedding preparations made some of the war zones she’d been to look peaceful.
But she’d use those torturous rituals to draw out this charade until treaties were signed. Then she’d bail out.
One thing still had her red-alert sensors clanging, though. The ease with which Mohab had agreed to her terms.
At first, he’d insisted only an actual marriage would appease King Hassan, that they’d have to dispense with an engagement to give him the quick union that would force him from his warpath. He’d suggested a six-month period before separating. According to him, that was enough time to settle all treaties and resolve all disputes.
But when she’d countered with the most she’d agree to, and that he’d have to convince King Hassan to sign the treaties during their pseudoengagement, he’d consented with disturbing equanimity.
Suddenly she felt as though a rocket had gone off inside her head. She knew why his acquiescence had disturbed her. Because it must have been what that insidious rat had been after all the time!
He must have anticipated her first point-blank refusal. So he’d let her get this out of her system. Being ruthlessly results oriented, he must have known an agreement wouldn’t be a possibility. The best he could expect from this first encounter was to stall her, stop her from leaving Judar and secure any level of cooperation.
So he’d kept applying pressure here so she’d sidestep there, pushed and pulled, kissed and caressed, laid bare secrets, exhumed heartaches, appealed to her ego and seared her senses in a steady barrage. When he’d felt her waver, he’d hit her with a solution that had too high a cost. At this point, he must have projected two outcomes. Since she’d already entered the cooperative zone, either she’d buckle and accept outright, or she’d counter with her own offer, bargaining a lower price. Either way, he’d achieve his objective. Her, here, playing along.
That it was only for now and not for real didn’t bother him. This was only round one to him. Being Machiavellian and a long-term thinker, he most certainly wouldn’t abide by the limits of what she’d granted. And as a master strategist, he had every reason to expect he wouldn’t have to. If he’d gotten her to concede that much in under two hours, he’d probably estimated he’d have her dancing to his tune in two days.
She was now certain he would keep on giving her as much rope as she asked for...and use it to lasso and truss her up.
Consternation bubbled on a stifled shriek. She even stomped her foot. It landed with a damp thud on the sand, not the satisfying bang she’d needed.
Groaning in frustration, her gaze jerked around the four-mile shore. Still alone. At least, apparently so.
But of course she wasn’t alone. Kamal must have given his guards orders to keep out of her sight. He wouldn’t want to infringe on her personal space, aggravating her more than he’d already had.
But there was no doubt dozens of eyes were watching the princess of Judar taking a stroll along the shore surrounding the royal palace. She wondered why they’d even bother. No one came within ten miles of the palace or its extensive grounds, by land or by sea. It wasn’t even one of those days when the palace and satellite buildings were open for tourists. The only way someone could target her would be by satellite or long-range missile.
Oh, well. She had known what kind of intrusions she’d signed on for the moment she’d agreed to stay in Judar and play Mohab’s game. The kind that had once had her running to the States and hiding in blessed anonymity and heavenly aloneness.
The first eighteen years of her life here had surely taken their toll. Though she loved her brothers fiercely, her experience in Judar had been the opposite of theirs in every respect. Even if, at the time, they’d just been three of the former king’s multitude of nephews, they’d been everything the region and the royal family valued. Male, magnificent, with personal assets running out of their ears. They’d had every freedom, along with privilege and power, to counter all the responsibilities, expectations and pressures.
While she, the unplanned child her parents had had twelve years after they thought they were done having children, had been a mistake—and a female one at that. To compound her problems, when she’d been only three her mother had been diagnosed with cancer. After a long struggle, when she’d been forced to relinquish Jala’s upbringing to others, she’d died when Jala was ten. Less than a year later, her father, totally destroyed by his wife’s long illness and death, had died, too, leaving Jala to the care of her older brothers, relatives and hired help.
The next years had been a nightmare. Her brothers, while they’d doted on her, had been too busy forging their success to have much time for her. As one who hated to ask for help or attention, she’d never let them know of her dismal state of mind. She’d felt isolated from the royal family, and from her culture, where she’d never felt she fit in.
But as she’d grown older, she’d been progressively more besieged by the restrictions that being female in Judar entailed, compounded by the fact that she had no mother to fend for her. And while she had enough royal status to suffer its downsides, she had enjoyed none of its advantages. Her situation had been further complicated when she’d refused the privileges offered women here, which she considered condescending and sexist, making her an outcast among her peers. By the time she was finished high school, she’d felt she’d do something drastic if she didn’t get away.
Then her maternal aunt’s husband was appointed the ambassador of Judar to the United States. Frantic to make use of this possible ticket out, she’d hounded her brothers unt
il they’d agreed to let her go with their aunt to continue her education there. She’d arrived in the States four months before her eighteenth birthday and had left her aunt’s custody the day after her birthday party.
Seizing on her freedom of choice at once, she’d started fulfilling her lifelong ambition to follow Farooq in his humanitarian relief efforts.
It had been while attending that ill-fated conference in Bidalya that she’d first set eyes on Mohab. And it had been during the ceremony where she’d received her first work-related award that he’d effectively entered her life.
Now he’d reentered it. And she was back in Judar.
And it was all because of him.
Mohab. Even his name aggravated her right now. His parents had to give him such a lofty one, didn’t they? And he had to be an exasperating bastard and live up to it, didn’t he? Awe-inspiring. Feared. Even frightening. And he’d gone on to be far more. Spellbinding. Overwhelming. Devastating.
Okay. It wasn’t all because of him. This impending war wasn’t of his orchestration. And the cruel twist of fate that made her the king of Judar’s sister, and Mohab the imminent king of Jareer, was also beyond him.
But now she thought of it, another thing was his fault. Their whole confrontation last evening.
After that preemptive opening seduction scene, he’d proceeded to scramble her entrenched belief that she’d just been another body and mission to him, asserting that he’d wanted her for far longer than she’d even thought. He’d claimed he’d monitored her for years, compromised his duty and disregarded his orders for her, craved her so much that he’d proposed for real. And all along, he’d kept pulling her back into mindlessness, as if he’d been unable to keep his passion in check.
Then she’d agreed to play her part and he’d just...stopped. He’d stood by calmly and just let her leave.
Did that mean everything he’d told her had been more manipulation designed to shove her into the slot where he needed her? Then, once he had, he’d just retracted his tentacles and settled back into neutral mode?
