by Olivia Gates
Najeeb again surprised her, being the one who nodded first. She’d expected it would be Numair who’d rush to give her what she wanted. It seemed his antipathy toward Najeeb was messing with his priorities. Weird.
But he at last nodded, his voice bottomless, his gaze filled with unfathomable things as he said, “For you.”
His response was still disturbing in every way possible, but it was enough for her current purposes. She knew he’d abide by whatever word he gave her.
She looked at each of them. “Since I’m the one with the most at stake here, in every way possible, how about you let me steer this conversation?” They both nodded at once this time. Her heart lifted at the progress. Wishing those two would realize they should be allies, she grinned from one man to the other. “I know both of you planned to be the one to resolve this crisis, so how about we discuss how you intended to do that? Maybe you can jointly devise an even more efficient way?”
“My plan doesn’t need any boosts in efficiency,” Najeeb said. “I’ll force my father to back down.”
Numair looked at Najeeb, his lips twisting in irony. “What a coincidence. That is exactly my plan.”
Jen’s laugh rang out again. “See? You two are so alike, you’re almost twins.” As their faces darkened again at her assertion, she placated them. “Not that either of you can see or admit it now, but one day you’ll realize I’m right. And boy, will I enjoy saying I told you so. But since we have more pressing issues at hand, and you at least admitted you share a common goal, how about you share the specifics of your plans to force Hassan to back down?”
* * *
Neither man ended up sharing the specifics of his plan. Or made any promise to work with the other, either.
But at least the hostility that had erupted between them had subsided.
At least it had on Najeeb’s side. As for Numair, it seemed as if an impenetrable shield had come down around him, stopping her from reading his thoughts or sensing his feelings, leaving her wondering what their truths were. But she couldn’t ask. Not because Najeeb was around, but because she’d never probe into private stuff Numair didn’t volunteer.
Najeeb, on the other hand, was a totally different matter. She’d insisted he stay and share their dinner, and he’d accepted her invitation, gradually relaxing in their company. Shedding his confrontational attitude, he’d asked Numair informed, in-depth questions about his work, seeming genuinely interested, then impressed. He had even ended up asking if Numair could use his unique experience and influence to collaborate with him in his humanitarian efforts. Numair had seemed reluctant to give any answer. She felt it was not because he didn’t want to help, but because it would involve him with Najeeb. But Najeeb was a master negotiator and had somehow managed to extract a promise from him.
By the time she’d seen Najeeb out alone, as Numair had taken an important and long call, Najeeb had given her his verdict on Numair.
He was big enough to admit he’d been wrong. Both his opinion of Numair and their relationship had changed radically. He’d said he knew men, could sense any sign of sleaze, exploitation or mistreatment a mile away. And he’d seen and sensed only respect and consideration in Numair’s treatment of her. He’d also felt how passionate Numair was about her, and how protective.
Before he’d crossed to the massive clearance where the helicopter had been waiting to take him back to the airport, Najeeb had laughingly said it looked like the Black Panther of Black Castle had finally found the one to tame him. He’d always heard that the most dangerous predators, once tamed, made the best lap cats.
“I thought he’d never leave.”
Jen yelped in delight as Numair did this incredible thing he always did. He appeared out of thin air and snatched her off her feet with the utmost ease, then drowned her in the staggering, cherishing power of his embrace.
She clung to him with everything in her as he strode eagerly with her across this unique place, nuzzling her face and lips into the power of his warm neck. At the villa’s far end, they entered the most stunning bedroom suite she’d ever seen. Though they were totally alone now, Numair still kicked the door closed, as he always did.
As he crossed to the king-size bed, she took in the tasteful decorations in what looked like authentic Zafranian antiques and handcrafted furnishings. Painted glass and copper lanterns hung from heavy chains, while complementing sconces hung on the walls. Bedouin jars and vases in varying sizes lay on shelves and tables and stood beside the heavy mahogany doors leading to the suite’s bathroom and dressing rooms. A braided-wood-and-straw chest sat at the end of the bed, while sofas with the same design and materials and ornate stone-and-bronze tables filled the sitting area facing the balcony doors. All over the floors and even on select places on the walls were hand-woven carpets in the deepest reds, honeys and browns, the same hues of the whole villa. And she suddenly realized.
All the colors in this place were hers!
She’d at first thought he’d bought this place furnished. But this was too specific to be a coincidence. He had to have done this for her, an answer to her bedroom in New York. But she couldn’t even imagine how and when he’d managed to order it done, and no doubt to oversee its realization to his precise vision. It was another proof that Numair was even more powerful than she could imagine.
But he’d taken it beyond matching her coloring. There were other incredible touches. For instance, binoculars on one table and a telescope by the balcony doors, to watch the animals in the morning and the stars at night. But what touched her to her core, had tears surging in her eyes, was an easel with every kind of canvas and paper and art material neatly stacked next to it.
She painted, and he must have noticed that most of the paintings hanging in her Tribeca apartment were desert landscapes. Anticipating that being here would stir her creativity again, he’d provided her with the means to indulge it whenever the mood struck.
Before she could thank him for being so unbelievably thoughtful, he passed the bed, opened the balcony doors and stepped outside to a wooden deck overlooking another, smaller infinity pool. By day the pool would spill out into a never-ending vista of the dramatic desert views. It was now a glittering turquoise splash in a night lit only by a nascent crescent moon and an explosion of sparkling stars. Numair wanted to make love out in the open, with only the canopy of sky and stars for cover.
In the middle of the expansive deck, a gigantic mattress was spread in covers the same deep mahogany red of her hair. He kneeled on it with her still securely held in his arms and tore the covers away before placing her down on the crisp cream sheets and coming down on top of her.
Crying out with the overload of emotions and sensations, she wrapped her arms and legs around him, her breath hitching, her body trembling, molten. It had been twelve hours since he’d made love to her, but with the way her senses were clamoring, ready and on the verge of combusting with his every touch, it felt like twelve days.
His hands alone possessed the ability to dissolve her shackles and release her potential, to expose her to his transfiguring appreciation. In a few hammering heartbeats, he had her open to his desire, making her all-powerful with it. Then his lips and tongue and teeth were all over her, making her feel as he always did, savored and worshipped and devoured.
Then he rose to expose himself to her hunger. She lay there unable to move with craving, her night-adjusted vision luxuriating in his star-silvered perfection.
He kneeled before her and she reached to caress his manhood. Hard and engorged, it felt as if it had been chiseled by virility gods and gifted with endless stamina and discipline. As her hands failed to span his incredible girth and length, the now-accustomed-to thrill of intimidation rattled through her. It again awed her that her hunger was so vast it enabled her to contain that much demand.
In response to her ministrations, his fingers shook in her
hair and his formidable body trembled over hers. Her heart expanded. Loss of control wouldn’t mean a thing from anyone else. But from Numair, with his supreme sufficiency and restraint, such a demonstration of dependence, such a confession of need, was profound.
What she felt was no longer about hunger, if it had ever been. The need had become all about him and being merged with him.
She cried out her desperation. “Numair, fill me...”
By the golden lights coming from the bedroom and the silver of the moon and stars, she saw the sequence of emotions unspooling across his face as her plea shattered him. He bore down on her, opened her wide around his hips, raised hers off the bed. He held her in one hand, the other supporting himself as he rose halfway on both knees. Then he plunged inside her.
Her scream at his abrupt invasion didn’t alarm him now. For he knew that she was yearning for the full power of his flesh in hers, the mutual domination and captivation. And he gave it all to her. He slammed into her, and she screamed for more, knowing he had more, as long as she could survive.
Then too soon, the tidal wave was cresting. Feeling her mounting distress, he rose on extended arms over her. Her gaze clung to his as he burned her with his greed for her total surrender and pleasure. When she started pleading, he angled his thrusts and sent her over the top.
Orgasms crashed through her, over and over, ebbing and cresting again and again. His mouth milked hers for each last stifled scream as she bucked and heaved beneath him, his growls that of the predator he was. On the jet, after their last explosive coupling, he’d said he’d end up dying in her arms of a pleasure overdose. Every time with him felt as if his prophecy would come to pass. What an ecstatic end that would be.
Once she subsided beneath him, he stopped for a while then started again, building his rhythm and her desperation until she pleaded for him to plunge with her this time into the abyss of ecstasy.
Growling with satisfaction at her resurrected hunger, then with his own desperation for release, he let himself go and climaxed inside her. His buttocks tightened hard as he lodged himself into her womb and let loose the jets of completion, roaring his pleasure, his surrender to this overpowering need between them.
The sensation of his release inside her, the intimacy of it, the hope that it would implant the miracle of a life they both wanted to make together... Everything overloaded her system into another orgasm. One more powerful than the last.
She surrendered to the ultimate pleasure, and the world faded away, as usual, nothing remaining in existence but him and being merged with him...
* * *
When she stirred from blissful oblivion, she found herself over him, beneath thick covers, with the balmy desert night sifting through her hair.
Without moving, she pressed her lips over his heart.
“Thank you.”
A deep chuckle reverberated beneath her ear. “Thanks are certainly mutual here.”
“I’m not thanking you for driving me out of my mind with pleasure. Mere thanks doesn’t do justice to what you do to me.”
He turned her on her side so he could look down at her. “Then what are you thanking me for?”
“You should be asking, what not for.” At his uncomprehending frown, she nipped his rugged jaw, delighting in how his beard bristled against her teeth. He’d shaved before they’d disembarked from his jet, but a dark stubble had grown out again. “You really have to work on being able to accept gratitude and take your dues.”
“Whatever you think I did...”
Her kiss sealed his lips, stopped his argument. “What you keep doing is not a matter of opinion, but facts as solid and as wonderful as every inch of you.”
His groan filled her lungs as she ran her hands down every one of those inches she had access to. “Anything I do for you is my absolute privilege and my intense pleasure.”
Her passion-swollen lips spread into a grin. “Fine, but I still get the privilege and pleasure of thanking you, all the time, so get used to it.”
He looked down at her thoughtfully. “I thought you didn’t have much to thank me for today. You evidently consider Najeeb a dear and valued friend, and I jumped down his throat, and I didn’t warm to him for the hours he stayed here. I was a lousy host.”
“I already knew you don’t do warm, Numair, and are not one for social graces.”
The power and bulk pressed to her turned to steel. “Like Najeeb, you mean? The perfect gentleman? The living, breathing epitome of the knight in shining armor?”
Her eyes widened as realization suddenly hit her. “Was that what this was all about? You were jealous?”
His eyes blazed into hers. “Insanely.” He raised a brow at her. “Perhaps even murderously.”
Her mouth dropped open before she exclaimed, “But we’re like brother and sister. We refused to even consider marrying each other, triggering this whole mess.”
“I knew that, on a logical level. But there was no reasoning with the beast who could only see that his mate was so at ease with someone else.” As she shuddered in delight at the word mate, he wrapped her hair around his hand and took it to his lips, caressing it as he would her mouth. “I could feel your history, your long years of knowledge and understanding, and I suddenly felt like an outsider.”
Was that insecurity that came into his eyes? Numair? Was it even possible?
Unable to bear that he’d feel anything bad on her account, she pulled him closer. “My brief days with you mean far more to me than all the years I’ve had with most people in my life put together. I’ve come closer to you than I have to anyone I’ve known my whole life. And I never wanted a gentleman or a knight in shining armor. I want you, the man I knew from the first glance was a ruthless marauder in darkest armor.”
His chest expanded, pressing into her sensitive nipples, his darkened eyes brightening again. “So you’re not disappointed with me for being the cold bastard that I was with your friend?”
“You can’t help what you feel, but you did what I asked. You stopped antagonizing him, invited him here to your place, even when you wanted me here alone this first time—”
He swept her to her back and loomed over her. “And every time. From now on, Ameen will only come when we leave, to clean and maintain the place. But while we’re together, no one else will ever set foot here. And it’s our place, not mine. In fact, since I acquired this place for you, it’s yours.”
She blinked. “What do you mean acquired it for me?”
“I mean I wrote it in your name.”
She jackknifed, sitting up. “What?”
He leaned back on one elbow, indulgence playing on his lips. “I have a copy of the deed here, and another has been sent to your legal representative. This place is all yours, all you. All I ask for is the privilege and pleasure of sharing it with you.”
Unable to wrap her mind around the enormity of his gesture, she could only stammer, “But...but...”
He pushed her down again, pressed his lips to hers in a silencing, drowning kiss.
By the time he raised his head, hers was spinning, with everything he was, everything he’d been doing to her and for her. Then his next words made the whole world spin.
“Tomorrow I go resolve your father’s and your kingdom’s crisis. Now sleep with me under the stars, in this paradise where only we exist, ya habibati.”
She surrendered to him as he adjusted their position for comfort, secured the covers over them and fell silent. In a minute she was certain he’d fallen asleep.
But there was no way she could, too. Every time she replayed his last words in her mind, she could barely breathe.
He’d said ya habibati.
When he wasn’t in the throes of passion.
My darling. My love.
Eight
“You sh
ould have told me I’d meet you on a One Thousand and One Nights set. I would have come in costume.”
Numair stared at the man who approached him as he stood at the top of the stairs facing the helipad. The last man on earth he’d ever thought would come to his assistance. Richard Graves.
The Englishman had waited until the helicopter’s rotors had stopped before he talked to make sure Numair heard his mockery. As if Numair didn’t already know it was his default in general, and with him in specific.
Only two years older than himself, Richard had been Cobra to him for the sixteen years he’d known him in the prison of The Organization.
But he wasn’t one of his brothers. He’d been one of his jailers. He’d long been his nemesis. He was now his partner. It was...complicated.
Richard was now looking around the expansive desert vista surrounding Numair’s home.
Yes, his home. That was what this place had become in the past six weeks. His first home. Anywhere Jenan was with him, even part-time like now—when she spent most of the days with him, making love, conducting their businesses remotely, just being together, but spent the nights in the royal palace for appearances’ sake—would now always be home to him.
She was home.
“So you’ve finally found your roots, eh? Happy now?” Richard drawled as he came to stand eye to eye with him. He was the only one who’d ever matched him in strength, in power, in danger and ruthlessness.
Numair glared at the man he’d loathed for the past twenty-five years. The man who’d once been his best friend.
Not that they’d ever mentioned this brief period when they’d been the most important person to each other. Not between themselves, and certainly not to others. All his Black Castle brothers knew was that they were sworn enemies. His brothers had spent the past two decades wondering and asking why. But neither he nor Richard had ever volunteered an explanation. What had happened between him and Richard had been before he’d made the others his team. And it had been unforgivable. Richard should be grateful Numair hadn’t killed him the moment he could.