by Dani Collins
This one smelled faintly of paint and was filled with contemporary furniture and a handful of decent art pieces. His decorator was competent, if unimaginative, having fallen back on the latest issue of Colors of the Year for lack of inspiration.
The moment Maurice left them alone, Kasim drew her into his arms again and kissed her quite passionately. Almost aggressively, questing for a response. It was as if he was trying to propel them into the mindless state they’d experienced last night in Paris.
It was breathlessly exciting, yet made her feel... She wasn’t sure and, as her blood began to heat, started not to care.
“Do I not even get a chance to explore the place myself?” she gasped when his mouth traveled to the side of her neck. Arousal suffused her, but she had the sense she was being used as much as desired. It scraped her insides raw.
“If you like,” he said, straightening and not looking pleased.
“Have you even seen it?” she asked, trying to recover and stung by the distance she sensed between them.
“I’m more interested in this.” His lashes cut downward as he slid his gaze to her toes and came back to her lips.
His ravenous gaze made her skin tighten, but her heart squeezed at the same time. She knew he was sublimating something.
“Kasim.” She cupped his jaw. “What has upset you?”
“I’m not upset.” He pulled away from her touch and moved to the bar. “Children get upset. Do you want wine?”
He was speaking shortly. Irritably. Like he was upset, she thought drily.
“Something about the bracelet bothered you. Did you recognize it?” She was intuitive that way. She just was. “You can tell me what it was, or I can make up stories of my own to explain your reaction.”
“I’ve never seen it,” he said flatly, setting out two wineglasses. “But the workmanship reminded me of Jamal’s. He designed jewelry.”
He wound the screw into the cork with a little squeaking noise and pulled it out with a pop, movements jerky, facial muscles still tense.
“My father hated it. He took it as a reflection against his own masculinity. An insult. He was ashamed to have a son who was...artistic,” he pronounced with disdain. “My mother used that to her advantage.”
“What do you mean?”
He poured, steadying the bottoms of each glass with two fingers as he did.
“Jamal is—was Fatina’s son. My father’s second wife. My mother...”
He set aside the bottle. For a moment he was a man on the verge of exploding, wrapped tightly, but packed to the eyebrows with dynamite, fuse burning in his eyes.
“Children should not be used as weapons, but my mother loved to find fault with him. To his face, to my father, in public. However she could humiliate him and Fatina, she did it. In sly ways, though. Small little stabs. Death by a thousand cuts,” he said grimly.
“That’s horrible.”
“It was. And my father was determined to turn him into something he could be proud of. That was his way of countering my mother’s attacks, by telling Jamal he was to blame for her criticisms. If he only changed, we would all have peace. I’m furious every time I’m reminded of how it was for him.”
“You couldn’t make your father see reason?”
He snorted. “This?” He lifted his glass and touched it to the rim of hers. “I don’t care one way or another for alcohol, but it is completely outlawed in Zhamair. It’s not a religious restriction. We have as many citizens who are Christian or Jewish as we do Muslims in our country, but my father’s word is rule. My father is a dictator in the way that political scientists define one.”
“But you do what you want when you’re away,” she noted with a glance at his Western clothes. “Couldn’t your brother have done that? I’m sorry, I know it’s very easy to say that he should leave his country and turn his back on his father. It’s not something anyone would do without deep struggle, but...”
“No,” Kasim agreed in a hard, grim voice. “It’s not. Especially since it meant leaving his mother and the rest of his siblings. Fatina has four younger children, as well. And he felt my father’s rejection very deeply. He wanted desperately to earn his respect. It was an impossible situation for him.”
“That’s so awful.” Her heart ached for not just his brother, but for Kasim. No wonder he wanted to take the reins from a man who possessed no hint of compassion or empathy. No wonder he had fought so hard for Hasna to have a love marriage.
“How did he die?” she asked softly, then clutched where the pang in her chest had intensified. She could see the anguish still fresh in Kasim’s face. “It wasn’t suicide, was it?”
Kasim didn’t speak, only stared into his wine for a long moment. His fingernails were so white where he clutched the stem of his glass, she though he would snap the crystal. His gaze came up and she thought he looked about to say something.
In the next second, he shut down, mouth flattening into a sealed line before he finally said in a neutral, almost practiced, voice, “It was a car crash. We were in Morocco on business. He was out on his own along a stretch of road near the ocean. He wasn’t reckless by nature, but he was under a lot of pressure from my father to give up the jewelry design, work with me full-time and marry suitably.”
His expression was filled with perturbed memories.
“The car went through the guardrail into the rocks below. Calling my father with the news was hard, but facing Fatina and Hasna, and my younger brothers and sisters...”
The torment in his expression was too much to bear. So much guilt, but how could he have prevented it? It was just a terrible accident. He shouldn’t blame himself.
She set aside her glass and came around the bar to slide her arms around his waist. “I’m sorry.”
“Why? You had nothing to do with it.” He continued to hold his glass, his other arm hanging at his side, stiff and unresponsive to her embrace. He looked down his nose at her.
“I shouldn’t have forced you to revisit his loss.”
She felt the flinch go through him. He sipped, stony as a column of marble that didn’t give under the lean of her weight, only supported her with cold, indifferent strength. “The bracelet did that.”
“And you wanted me to help you think of nicer things.” She traced her fingertips up the line of his spine through the back of his shirt, trying to reach him through physical contact since he seemed to have shut her out emotionally. “Now I will. If you like.”
“What about your great explore?” He didn’t bend at all.
“I’ve seen a flat just like this one. But this...” She brought her hands around to climb his chest and brush his suit jacket open, nudging it to fall back off his shoulders. “This territory is still new to me.”
She was trying to be bold, to find the affinity they had shared in Paris, but was highly unsure when he failed to respond. Self-doubt, her great nemesis, twisted through her.
“I plan to be very thorough in my mapping of it,” she said, voice wavering as she became convinced he was about to reject her.
“You’re liable to see nothing but this ceiling for the next hour,” he warned, setting aside his glass and clasping her hips in heavy hands.
“Maybe that’s all you’ll see,” she said with a tremble of relief. “Did you think of that?”
* * *
Kasim had almost told her the truth about Jamal. It was a stunning break in his normal vigilance against any woman’s intrusion into his inner world.
Idly caressing from the back of her thigh over the curve of her buttock to the hollow in the small of her back, he wondered how this smooth golden skin had come to get so far under his own in such a short amount of time.
He didn’t regard women as a Western indulgence he allowed himself when he traveled, but he did treat his sexual relationship
s much as he did his business ones. Some were brief transactions, some longer term, but they were exchanges and trades, always agreements with clear parameters. Paramours didn’t cause him to rearrange his life and they rarely stimulated more than his libido.
This one, however... He had made a ridiculously large transfer this morning so he could protect their privacy, mindful of her request last night to keep the world from cheapening their association.
Why? What did he care if their association was known or in what context? He would eagerly show her off. The idea of staking a public claim held a great deal of pleasure for him, in fact.
He very carefully blocked the vision of any other man thumbing into the small dimples at the top of each of her firm, round cheeks, then he lightly traced the line that separated them, fingertips claiming Angelique’s backside along with the rest of her, sweeping the back of her thigh and taking possession of her calf.
He had grown up watching his father deal with the fallout of indulging unfettered lust. Every person was susceptible to being attracted to the wrong person—or rather, an inconvenient person in relation to the life they led. Giving in to that desire was the root of whatever problems arose.
Kasim had always regarded himself as superior to his father and brother. He was capable of rising above the temptations that foretold complications.
Was he kidding himself, believing this thing with Angelique was a trouble-free dalliance that could end tomorrow morning with a light kiss and a “pleasant knowing you”?
An uncomfortable bolt of rejection shot through him, not just resisting the idea of walking away, but outright refusing to countenance it. His reaction was so visceral, his hand closed in a small squeeze where it rested above the back of her knee. He was literally holding on to her and he’d only thought about the inevitable parting that awaited them.
It was a sobering confrontation with his inner animal, the one he had always been so sure he governed without effort.
“I’m awake,” she murmured on a contented sigh, as if she took his grip to be a test of her level of consciousness.
She turned her head so she could blink dreamy eyes at him while keeping her face mostly buried in her folded arms and the fall of her magnificent hair. “Just thinking. Do you want to meet me in Berlin next weekend? I have a thing.”
He had places to be, people to rise above.
“I thought we were staying out of the spotlight.”
Her sleepy smile slowly warmed to something vulnerable yet elated. It made his heart swerve and swell.
“I was really asking if you wanted to see me again after tonight.” The tone in her voice caused a pleasant-painful vibration through him.
He looked at where his hand was still firm on the back of her thigh. “I fear for our lives at the rate we’re going, but I was going to ask you to stay the weekend. I have to escort my mother and sister back to Zhamair on Sunday, but I will arrange to take them back late.” He would also cancel his lunch arrangements for tomorrow with his foreign secretary and the British counterpart.
“I wasn’t planning to spend the weekend,” she said, last night’s troubled light coming into her eye. Her sister again.
“No?” He tensed and felt her hamstring flex against his light grip.
Guilt and longing fought for dominance in her gaze. She released a soft moan of struggle and gave a taut stretch beneath his touch.
“I will if I can arrange it.” Her tone echoed with something like defeat.
He began to pet her again, blood tingling as he fondled her with more purpose. He wasn’t used to a woman resisting him. It made him restless for her capitulation. Not something forced. No, he needed her to give herself up to him.
Rolling her over, he began to kiss her, running his mouth to all the places that made her arch and moan under him, impressing on her the benefit of belonging to him. As he felt the tension in her, the clasp of nearing climax, he kissed his way back up the center of her torso.
“Tell me what you want.”
“You know,” she sobbed, moving against his hand, but he followed her undulations, keeping his penetration shallow and light.
“You want this?” he very slowly and gently deepened his caress, deliberately holding her on the plane of acute pleasure she occupied, not letting her tumble into orgasm. “Or this?”
He rolled atop her and loved the saw of her breath as she gasped in a sensual agony. Holding himself in a tight fist, fighting back from his own approaching peak, he rubbed his aching tip against her slick folds, nudging at her with promise.
She danced and angled her hips, trying to capture him.
He shook with want, barely able to see straight, but made himself hold off and only kiss her. “What will you do for me?”
“Anything,” she gasped, but opened her eyes. They were shiny with helpless torture, a hint of resentment even. She knew what he was demanding. Her.
He cupped her head and slowly, slowly sank into her. Their breaths mingled as their bodies joined, both of them parting their lips to release jagged noises of intense pleasure.
How could she resent this? How?
He made love to her then, sending her over the edge, then keeping her aroused so they were damned near clawing each other when the next crest approached. He didn’t think he could wait for her, but he wanted her with him. Demanded it with the hard thrust of his hips against her. Needed it.
She locked herself around him and released a keening noise, shuddering beneath him. The greedy clasp of her sheath triggered his own climax and he shouted in triumph as he joined her in the paroxysm.
* * *
Angelique was a little stunned by what she’d just experienced. Not just the ferocity of Kasim’s lovemaking. She’d been so aroused, she had craved that intensity, but there’d been a loss of self in that joining. He had been the only thing important to her. It left her scrambling to recover her sense of autonomy, while he made it impossible by rolling back into her and running proprietary hands over her still-tingling skin.
The condom was gone along with his urgency. Now he was the tender man whose touch was soothing and reassuring. He almost lulled her back into thinking everything about him was safe, but it wasn’t. He imperiled the very heart of her.
She put up an instinctive hand against his chest, resisting his effort to pull her into a sprawl across his sweat-damp body.
“What’s wrong?” He picked up her hand and lightly bit her fingertip, then kissed the same spot. “I can’t make promises about Berlin, but I will try. Good enough?”
He sounded languid and satisfied while she was completely dismantled.
“Is it because we might be found out?” She had been trying to think how they could continue on the sly, but couldn’t see a way, not unless he wanted to go broke buying private flats. He hadn’t seemed particularly worried about exposure anyway. “Would it be complicated for you with Hasna if something wound up in the press?”
He snorted. “I don’t consult my sister on how I conduct my private life.”
There. That was the issue. He resented her sister. She stiffened and tried to pull away.
“That was a cheap shot,” he allowed, arms clamping like a straitjacket around her. “I take it back.”
“No!” She turned her face away. “You don’t get to kiss me into forgetting you said it.”
He sighed against her cheek.
“I’m spoiled,” he stated without compunction. “Never second fiddle to anyone except my father and that is a finite situation, not that I wish his life away. I only mean that I am his heir and aside from him, I am autonomous.”
“Yet I’m supposed to be content as a second fiddle in your life.”
A long pause that was so loaded, she had to glance warily at him, fearful she’d truly angered him.
Maybe she hadn
’t angered him, but she’d scored a point. She could see echoes of his mood earlier when he’d talked about his mother’s brutal treatment of his father’s second wife and his half brother.
“I have meetings all next week,” he said in a cool tone. “Roundtable discussions with a dozen of our region’s most powerful leaders. You must have an idea of our political and economic landscape? The stakes are always high. I go so my father won’t or he’ll send us back to the Stone Age. The conference could easily go into next weekend. That is the only reason I am avoiding saying yes to Berlin.”
“Fine.” Now she felt like she’d pressured a concession of sorts from him, but it was a hollow victory. “It was just a thought.”
“What are you doing there?” His tone wasn’t patronizing, but she read his question as an attempt to mollify her and move past their conflict.
“A fashion awards night.” She glossed over it. “There’s a white tie and champagne thing after. I’m presenting so I can’t skip it. You’d probably find it boring anyway.”
“Do you do a lot of these things? Who do you usually go with?”
She would not kid herself that he sounded jealous.
“Colleagues. Sometimes one of my brothers. Honestly, it’s fine. I’m supposed to be at a thing tonight and—” She’d forgotten to cancel, she realized. She had decided not to go once she realized Trella would be in town, but had paid the plate fee because it was a charity she liked to support. It wasn’t a big deal that she was a no-show. She shouldn’t be experiencing this stab of guilt.
All part of Kasim’s magnifying effect on her emotions, she supposed. She frowned, aware of a cloud of traitorousness blanketing her too, along with a niggling desire to rebel. She put it all down to letting him extract that surrender to his seduction at the expense of thinking of—
She scrambled out of his arms to sit up. Trella.
“What—?” Kasim made a noise.