by Olivia Gates
He shouted her name, threw his head back, dug his hands in the depths of her silk fire and spilled his seed on her tongue.
She held his eyes as he bucked again and again into her hold, as she drained him to the last drop.
A long, long moment passed before she let him slip from her reddened, swollen lips. He lay there, gulping air, staring into the depths of her magical eyes and instead of satisfaction, passion roared again, consuming his body in a fiercer fire. Hers. She’d always been what ignited him. What satisfied him.
He tried to pull her up, bring her over him. She pushed his hands away. Before he could move, she stood up, her eyes smoldering down at him, her voice husky.
“I owed you one. Now we’re even.”
Then she turned and walked away.
Seven
Haidar’s paralysis lasted only seconds. Then he was on his feet, shoving himself back into his pants and bounding after her.
She was buttoning her blouse as she strode away, then finger-combing her tousled hair. He knew she heard him coming. She clearly had no intention of stopping, or letting him stop her.
He did. By taking away her means of walking.
He swept her off her feet, smiled down at her. “Though that was almost literally mind-blowing, who says we’re even? You owe me eight years’ worth of pleasure.”
“Eight minutes’ worth is all you get from this gal. Now put me down before I give your perfect nose some crooked character.”
He gathered her hands in one of his. “You have to regain the use of your hands first.”
He strode to the bedroom suite he’d picked as theirs, expected her to struggle, make good on her threat. She just looked up at him, her normally communicative eyes empty of expression.
How he wanted her. The pleasure she’d just given him had only intensified his need for her. His need to pleasure her in return was also reaching critical levels. He wanted her naked and hot and writhing beneath his hands, his lips, bucking under his body, convulsing around him, her release wrenching his from his depths.
He reached the bed he’d bought just for her, huge and firm and covered in sheets a darker shade of her eyes. He hadn’t thought she’d be here this soon. Someone out there must believe he deserved something fantastic for a change.
Laying her down, he descended on top of her, groaning at the feel of her cushioning him, the only flesh he’d ever felt a part of his own. His lips sought hers. She turned her face away.
He trailed his lips down her face, neck, down to the swell of her breasts. “Do you know how many nights I lay awake, craving to feel you like this? Hearing your moans, your sighs and cries, the memory of your body enfolding mine echoing in my cells until I felt they’d burst?”
Her answer was tight-lipped. “How many? Two?”
A spasm twisted inside his chest. “More like two thousand.”
“And did you feel that way on those nights, before or after you had sex with another woman? Or three?”
He rose on both arms, frowned down at her. “We’re not going there. What we did or didn’t do in the past eight years isn’t relevant. We’re going to enjoy each other now, as we are today.” His lips spread again at the sight of her beneath him, ripe and trying not to arch into him. “And from today onward, I am all for any kind of game you want to indulge in.”
She pushed at him. “The only game I want to try is hide-and-seek, where you hide, and I don’t seek you ever again.”
His frown returned. “You’re…angry?”
Her eyes spat emerald daggers at him. “Give the man a medal.”
“I thought it was part of this sensual game you started. You were always all for those, too.”
“Are you high on something? Like insensitivity and arrogance?”
He rolled to his side and watched in confusion as she scrambled away from him. “But I apologized and promised our liaison will never compromise you again.”
She rounded on him as she rose from the bed. “And as a first step in assuring this, you had your driver leave me with you in an empty house. The news will be all over Azmahar by now.”
“I flew Haleem in from Zohayd. He’s fully Zohaydan and wouldn’t reveal anything about you at gunpoint. It’s why I insisted you come alone. I told my visitors I had informed you they had to leave, so you ‘wouldn’t bother coming.’”
She tore her gaze away, looked around the spacious room as if noticing it for the first time. He tensed as he waited for her reaction. He’d spent most of last week preparing it.
It was he who felt rewarded. A wave of pleasure washed over him as she stood bathed in the gold-tinged lights he’d carefully installed to showcase her, framed by the color scheme of fire and emerald he’d meant to reflect hers. Gauzy curtains billowed at the balcony doors behind her like swirls of magic, and her hair stirred in the evening sea breeze like tongues of dark flame.
His fiery goddess in all her glory. At least, in her still exasperatingly clothed one. Soon he’d have all that voluptuousness displayed for his pleasure, his worship.
Thankfully, the sensual ambience he’d tailored for her had an as-clear effect on her.
She was more flushed, less steady as she turned to him. “You put a lot of thought and effort into this, didn’t you?”
If only she knew how much. Even he was still smarting from parting with that much cash. “Anything to help you relinquish your worries and inhibitions. And after what you just did to me while still suffering from both, I don’t know if I’ll survive when you let them go completely.”
Her face hardened. “This new discretion is for yourself.”
He exhaled, perplexed by her continued resistance. “It is also for me, since I get to have you. But—”
She cut him off. “You recognized you were being a self-defeating idiot. I bet it took seeing Rashid to make you realize that, and that the throne isn’t in your pocket no matter what scandals you cause. You have to clean up your act if you’re to have a prayer against him. Now you’ll play the committed, conservative contender and shove me back into the dirty-secret slot.”
He found himself on his feet, facing her across the bed, memories unraveling with a sick charge along his every nerve.
“What’s this? Anyone would think it’s you who have a grievance against me, that I’m the one who walked out on you. May I remind you that you are the one who left when I outraged your sense of independence, sinned in believing I was more than an ‘exotic fling’ to you? And are you pretending that keeping our relationship secret wasn’t exactly what you wanted, then and now? I’m giving you what you always wanted. No demands on my side, no obligations on yours, only no-consequences indulgence. What more do you want?”
* * *
Why? How?
She’d long known that he felt nothing for her. So why and how did getting confirmation of that tear her apart all over again?
He came around the bed, raven hair raining down his forehead, the shirt she’d torn hanging open to reveal the magnificent sculpture of his torso, which she’d barely had a chance to worship.
He stopped less than a foot away, bearing down on her with his overwhelming beauty and rising exasperation. “What kind of game are you playing now? What’s with the indignant act? According to you, we had only a sexual liaison, and you ended it. Now that it would be feasible and pleasurable for both of us to resurrect it, why are you behaving as if I once betrayed you? As if I’m degrading you and trying to take advantage of you?”
“Because you did. And you are.”
He stared at her as if she’d grown a third eye.
And everything she’d spent years holding back came flooding out.
“Being honest about how you’ll take what you want and give nothing in return doesn’t make you honorable. And it sure as hell doesn’t make you th
e wronged party here. It only makes you an unfeeling bastard who cares only about getting what you want, who would use anyone in the most horrible way for your own purposes, even the trivial one of telling someone ‘I told you so.’”
Every word fell on him with the visible effect of a slap. “B’haggej’jaheem, what the hell are you talking about?”
And she shouted, “I’m talking about your bet.”
He stumbled back, his face going slack with shock, reactions rioting across his eyes.
Then he finally rasped, “You know.”
It was a statement. An admission. At last.
She’d thought it would bring her relief. It didn’t.
Feeling hers eyes tearing, she tore her gaze away, looked feverishly around for her sandals.
She shoved her feet into them, tried to regain her shaky balance. “Thank you for not insulting me more by pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“You heard me and Jalal that night.”
The same conclusion Jalal had come to. She hadn’t refined his deduction.
She did Haidar’s. “That was only how I made sure.”
He blocked her path as she tried to head for the door. “How did you find out in the first place?”
“I don’t owe you anything, least of all an explanation. And if you want someone to play sexual games with, I can recommend dozens for you to pick from. I’m sure you have your own waiting list.”
He spread his arms, stopping her from circumventing him, his face gripped in urgency and frustration. “B’Ellahi, Roxanne, just tell me!”
Her chest heaved with the remembered humiliation, her eyes threatening to pour long-dried tears. “How do you think?”
Realization detonated in his eyes. Certainty. He dropped his arms, staggered away. “My mother.”
She let the entrenched fury in her eyes confirm.
“How did she know?” he groaned.
She shrugged. “She said she knows everything about you and Jalal. But especially you.”
Agitation receded in his eyes, determination filtering into its place. “I need to know everything she said.”
“I’ll tell you what my mother said. When you approached me at that ball expecting me to fall at your feet.”
Heated recollection overlapped agitation in his eyes. “Your words were cool but your eyes were incendiary. I could think of nothing but erasing your reluctance, making you admit that your desire was as instant and as powerful as mine.”
She backed away as if from the memories. “The jury will remain out on that similarity. But my mother saw you for what you are. She also saw that you had me blinded and realized that to stop me from falling for your seduction, she had to tell me a secret.”
“What secret could she have told you? I have none.”
“Of course you don’t. You keep your vices and transgressions proudly out in the open.”
That silenced him. His steel eyes, so like his mother’s, turned black. As if her opinion hurt.
She ignored the spasm of guilt at what she had to admit was a gross exaggeration. “It was a secret of hers. During her first stint in Azmahar. She was beginning her career, and she fell madly in love with a royal. She discovered his illegal activities, yet still couldn’t walk away. But he fabricated evidence against her, preempting her in case she attempted to expose him, forcing her to leave the kingdom in silence or she would have been publicly disgraced and prosecuted.”
His eyes narrowed. “Was that man your father?”
It was the first time he had asked her about her parentage. “No. My father was a one-night stand she had when she returned home from Azmahar heartbroken. But years later, that royal found himself in need of her support and got her an even better post in Azmahar. She was in no position to say no. That was when we came here. He tried to weasel himself back into her good opinion and bed, but she told him where he could put his lies and platitudes.”
He said nothing, waiting for the punch line.
She delivered it. “Moral of the story—don’t get involved with a royal. He will use you for his whims and abuse you for his benefit. And when I didn’t listen, worse happened to me.”
His frown turned spectacular. “What do you mean, worse?”
“You didn’t even notice that my life was being messed up and my future destroyed. The one thing that mattered to you was that I showed up for your scheduled sex sessions.”
“Are you talking about the setbacks you had in your studies?”
Her heart lurched. “So you knew. And you didn’t ask me about it, or even offer a word of concern or encouragement.”
His already black frown darkened. “Jalal informed me you’d started out so far at the top of your class, you were in one of your own. He made it sound as if I was the reason you were falling behind. I…didn’t know what to say. Or do.”
“You thought our liaison and the hoops you made me jump through to maintain its secrecy were taking their toll on me, but tough for me, right? You had your pleasure and your convenience, and to hell with me and my future.”
He grimaced again. “All I saw at the time was that you’d told Jalal, but not me.”
“And we’re back to the one thing that matters to you. Your rivalry with Jalal.”
“It wasn’t like that. This was about you.”
“Sure. It was so about me you didn’t care that my academic progress was in jeopardy, even when you believed you were the reason for the deterioration. You knew me so little you believed I’d let an affair stop me from excelling in my work.”
“But…if I wasn’t the reason, then…” He stopped, shock blossoming in his gaze all over again.
“And he sees the light. Yep, your mother again. She had more influence in Azmahar than the rest of the royal family put together. Your efforts at secrecy worked on my mother and the rest of the kingdom, but your mother knew everything about us and decided to rectify the situation. I found out how when I was protesting my inexplicable grades to my favorite professor. She confessed she and the rest of the staff had instructions to increase pressure until I had to leave to save what I could of my future. She said I would harm her if I didn’t keep it a secret and advised me to stop whatever I was doing to be on your mother’s bad side. You were the only thing I was…doing.”
“And you never told me.”
“I didn’t know if I could. You always seemed to be…hers.” His face became stone, his eyes flint. She didn’t care if that affronted him. It was the truth. “But I was guilty of romanticizing you, believing I mattered to you, against all proof to the contrary. I ended up deciding to tell you, thought you might intervene, stop her from destroying my education. Uncanny woman that she is, she seemed to smell my intention and preempted me. She had me brought to her. It was quite an eye-opener, meeting her in the flesh. I understood so much about you, then.
“She prefaced her venom by saying she’d tried to be merciful, tried to let me leave with my pride intact. But since I was so foolish as to invite a confrontation, she had to destroy it. She informed me of your bet with Jalal. She was very proud of your talent for manipulation, which you inherited from her and honed with your rivalry with Jalal. I might not have seen it that way then, but I do now. I owe her a ton of gratitude.”
His nonexpression, which she’d once thought indicated he felt nothing, cracked, and bewilderment flooded in.
She explained. “Though she was—and no doubt still is—a vile snob, it was her wish to get rid of me sooner rather than later that stopped me from being the unwitting pawn in your power games with Jalal any longer. She read my disbelief, told me to go demand the truth from your own mouth.
“Before I could, you called me and ordered me to drop everything and go to you. I was stupid enough to hope you’d say it wasn’t true, or at least have some ex
cuse to mitigate the sheer petty evil of it all. I was so anxious to clear everything up, I arrived at the apartment before you did.”
His eyes closed for a moment, opened. “You were there all along. You heard everything Jalal and I said.”
Hot needles pushed behind her eyes. “It was only then that I realized the depth of your resemblance to her. And I decided I wouldn’t give either of you that last triumph over me. You wouldn’t see me humiliated and heartbroken, and she wouldn’t see me running off with my tail between my legs. Your mother raised you to use everyone in your power games—mine raised me to never relinquish equal ground.”
Time stretched after she’d said her last word.
It seemed an eternity later when he finally spoke. “So everything you said, every word that has been echoing in my mind ever since, was just you maintaining said equal ground.”
Her nod was terse. She was giving him validation in retrospect. Any denigrating thing she’d said had just been a desperate attempt to walk out of that battlefield in one piece.
She didn’t care. Let him have his triumph.
“What about the things you said before that day, Roxanne?”
He wanted more. A full admission. He might as well have it.
“That I loved you? I meant it, wholeheartedly.” She looked away, unable to bear the terrible loss mushrooming inside her all over again. “Not that I ever blamed you for that. You made it clear you had nothing to give me, were true to yourself, to your principles. As you pointed out the first night you came back, love isn’t something your species values or tolerates. If I was stupid enough to give it to you, it was unasked for, unwanted, and I had no right to complain when my heart was trodden on.”
Another heart-shredding moment of silence passed.
Then he whispered, “I didn’t initiate that bet, Roxanne.”
“I know. Jalal told me he did.”
He stiffened.
Of course. Jalal. The one thing sure to provoke a profound reaction in him. “Don’t tell me you forgot about it in minutes, too.”