by Olivia Gates
She trembled with the magnitude of her love and gratitude, that he existed, that he was now hers, no matter how fleetingly. She’d loved him with everything in her from the moment he’d touched her. She’d wanted him even more when she’d felt his baby growing inside her. And now he was her husband. Her husband.
The knowledge made it all deeper, all-encompassing, turning her hunger for him almost into distress.
Then he put what she felt into words and made it much worse, and infinitely better. “Anything I can think of to show you my love, prove your ownership of me, will never be enough. I thought I wanted you as much as I possibly could before. But now, knowing our baby is growing inside you, knowing you’re my wife…my desire for you makes my former ferocity seem tame and my worry of losing control an easily curbed impulse. My mind is shooting to all kinds of fanciful fears, that our union this time, with us feeling this way, might take us all the way to the edge of survival.”
“So what?”
Her reckless challenge cracked his control. He dragged her by the hand, slammed her against him, breast to thigh. “So what indeed. How about we see what the edge of survival feels like?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, take me there, Shaheen, and beyond.” She slithered from his hold onto her knees before him, her hands worshipping his hardness through his pants, shaking on his zipper.
As she slid it down he whipped one hand to his back, snapped something from the band of his pants before they fell to mid-thigh, allowing him to spring free, thick and daunting, dark and glistening with craving, throbbing with control.
She’d barely taken him into her mouth, licking the addictive taste of his desire from his silk-smooth crown when he pulled her up, gathering her from the ground in one arm. She cried her protest and he growled as he saluted each of her nipples with a devouring suckle. She cried out again as another wave of arousal crashed through her, her core pouring its demand for his invasion.
“You always say it’s punishment, not reward, giving you pleasure without giving you me.” He pressed her to the capitoné wall beside his bed. “Tonight you get reward first, then punishment later.”
He made a lightning-fast move with his left hand as his right one secured her against the wall, his bulk opening her around him. She felt a sharp tug, heard a sharper click.
She tried to turn her head, to investigate, but his eyes caught hers, and everything ceased to matter, to exist.
Lava simmered in his eyes and from the erection that found her entrance. His hiss felt even hotter. “I want to invade you, finish you, perish inside you.”
“Then do it, finish us both…please…”
He rammed into her. All his power and love and hunger behind the thrust. He slid against all the right places, places he’d created inside her, abrading nerves into an agony of response, stimulating receptors for all the sensations they could transmit. Then he moved as hard and fast as she was dying for him to.
Almost too soon she started shaking, arched against him in a deep bow, hovering at the edge of a paroxysm as the world diffused, only his beloved face in focus, clenched in pleasure, his eyes vehement with his greed for hers.
She tried to bring both arms around him to hold him as she gave everything to him, but her right hand snagged, wrenched back.
She looked down in her haze, found it shackled to his left one in a gilded handcuff.
Just the idea—that he’d done this, bound her to himself, thought of it, wanted to show her how inseparable he wanted them to be, how mind-blowingly deep, how decadently wicked it all was… Her senses went haywire, sent overload shearing through her.
“I did tell you I’d tie you to my wrist, didn’t I?” he growled as he gave her his fiercest thrust yet and her body all but exploded in the most powerful climax he’d ever given her.
Her shriek of his name came in bursts as the convulsions of release ripped through her. Discharge after discharge of pleasure pummeled her, squeezing all of her muscles, inside and out over every part of him, his heat and weight bearing down on her and within her in waves, stimulating her to her limits and beyond.
She raved, begged. “Can’t…can’t…please…you…you…”
And he gave her what she needed. The sight of his face, the feel of him succumbing to the ecstasy she gave him, the pulse of his own climax inside her. They hit her at her peak, had her thrashing, weeping, unable to endure the spike in pleasure. Everything blipped, faded…
Heavy breathing and sluggish heartbeats seemed to echo from the end of a long tunnel as the scent of sex and satisfaction flooded her lungs. Awareness trickled into her body, a mess of tremors so sated she was practically numb. She felt one thing. Shaheen. Still inside her.
She opened lids weighing a ton each, saw him swim in and out of focus. She was on her back on the bed, with him kneeling between her legs, her hips on his thighs, his free palm kneading her breasts, gliding over her shoulders, her arms, her belly.
She watched him watch her, her position the image of wantonness, of surrender and trust, her free arm thrown above her head, her back arched, breasts jutting, legs opened over his hips, his shaft half-buried inside her, stretching her glistening entrance, wrapped around him in the most intimate kiss.
“So how did you like your…reward?”
“You were right…” she slurred at his deepening occupation. “This was…the edge of survival. I felt…my every cell…burst.”
He set his teeth as he rocked another inch inside her. “See why I always insist on taking the edge off?” He rose off the bed, scooped her up with him, his smile all satisfaction and indulgence. “But now that I have, I can really turn to your punishment.”
And for the rest of the night, among a few more rewards, he punished her with escalating inventiveness. And in continued captivity.
Johara jumped when something dropped into her lap.
She looked down and saw the handcuffs at the same moment she felt Shaheen surrounding her.
She’d been so absorbed that she hadn’t felt his approach for the first time ever.
“The best morning in history to you, my crafty Gemma.”
She beamed up at him, opened her mouth for his luxuriant invasion. She’d undone the handcuffs and slipped out of bed two hours ago. She couldn’t bring herself to wake him up, but had been burning to examine the jewels. And she had.
He let her surface from his kiss, slid a loving touch down her cheek. “I see you’ve filled a whole notebook with observations. Can I hope that you have a list for us?”
“No.” She saw dismay gather in his eyes and rushed to deliver the rest of her verdict. “I have better than that. I know exactly who forged these jewels.”
Eleven
“Are you sure about this, ya joharti?”
Johara turned her eyes away from the streets of Geneva zooming by the window of their car. She’d been looking blindly outside since they’d left the airport. Shaheen’s worried gaze had been touching her ever since. Now that he’d voiced his concern, she could no longer look away.
She met his solicitude and again wanted to tell him that she wasn’t sure. And again dismissed the thought as it formed.
She nodded to him, kissed the hand that swept down her cheek. His eyes softened even more before they snapped back to the road.
They’d flown here on his private jet hours after she’d delivered her verdict. Not that he was asking her if she was sure of that. Shaheen, as she became more certain with each passing moment, took everything she said as incontrovertible fact. He had absolute faith not only in her integrity but also in her expertise. He was confident that her deduction of the identity of the forger was incontestable. Equally because he believed she knew her business, and that she wouldn’t accuse someone if she wasn’t certain beyond a shadow of doubt.
She was. Although she’d been tempted to say she wasn’t. Because she felt the moment her role in uncovering the conspiracy was over, her time with Shaheen would be over, too.
Nothing worked to allay
that fear. Not even when he said they had time to abort the conspiracy and had forever together. In fact, the more he said that, the more desperate she became. All this bliss couldn’t possibly continue. Not at anything less than a terrible price. One she would be unable to let Shaheen or Zohayd pay.
She’d started counting down her remaining time with him from the moment she’d given him her verdict.
He and Harres and Amjad had at first said they’d handle it. They would besiege the forger with their special influence and force a confession. She’d insisted on being the one to approach him. She believed no coercion would be needed. Shaheen had at once trusted her judgment, supported her decision.
But he sensed her agitation, was worried that she was outside her comfort zone. And she was, if not for the reason he thought.
They stopped at a gated parking lot. The attendant recognized both of them and at once let them into the area reserved for the exclusive establishment’s most elite clientele.
Shaheen stopped the car, turned to her. “Kolloh zain?”
She pulled him to her for a brief, fierce kiss. “Yes, everything’s all right. Let’s do this.”
In moments they were walking hand in hand into the avant garde reception area of the showroom of LaSalle, one of the most celebrated designers of original jewelry in the world.
As more people recognized them, they were given the treatment only a star fashion designer and a billionaire prince could be given. In seconds they were let into the sanctum of Théodore LaSalle, the establishment’s owner and the brand’s namesake.
Dressed in fifties-movie-star elegance, the David Niven look-alike rushed to meet them in the foyer leading to his office, his face split into a wide smile of someone expecting an unrepeatable honor and a transaction worth a year of magnificent sales.
“Doesn’t look as if he suspects why we’re here,” Shaheen muttered under his breath as the man ushered them into his office and rushed to his desk. “Or he’s a superlative actor.”
“What can I offer you, mes cheries?” LaSalle asked, one finger on his intercom. “All refreshments are available.”
“That won’t be necessary, Monsieur LaSalle,” Johara said. “Please, come sit with us. We have something of extreme importance to discuss with you.”
LaSalle’s face fell as he walked to his sitting area, where Shaheen had led her to a love seat opposite the seat he gestured for the man to take.
Trepidation seized LaSalle’s face. Shaheen said something to her in Arabic. That this looked like a guilty man. She squeezed his hand, and he nodded. Whatever he thought, he would let her deal with LaSalle. She’d told him she believed not only in the man’s artistry but in his integrity, too. She would give him every benefit of the doubt first.
She started, careful not to make her words either a question or an accusation. “It’s about the duplicates of the Pride of Zohayd collection, Monsieur LaSalle.”
The man didn’t even look at her, his gaze pinned nervously on Shaheen. Johara could imagine how her husband looked to the man, a lethal predator crouched in deceptive calm, but clearly only on a tight leash, and would launch into a slashing attack at a word from her.
“Are there any complaints about any of the pieces, Prince Aal Shalaan? I am, of course, willing to replace any that have been damaged, even if due to negligence. I produce my pieces with a lifetime guarantee. But if this is about the quality, in my defense—” he swung his gaze to her, as if asking her support “—you of all people, Mademoiselle Nazaryan—pardonnez moi, Princess Aal Shalaan—know the difficulty of working from photographs, even the most detailed and multiangled of close-ups.”
Johara sat forward, placed a placating hand on the man’s trembling one. “The quality is what only you can achieve, Monsieur. It was the sheer genius of the duplication that narrowed down my options to you. It’s imperative that you tell us everything about how you came to make those duplicates.”
“You mean you don’t know?” LaSalle gaped at her. “But it was the royal house who commissioned the duplicates.”
After a stunned moment when Johara thought they’d gotten this all wrong, she asked slowly, “You mean King Atef personally commissioned them?”
The man shook his expressive hands. “Of course not. I don’t even know who did, but it was understood it was the royal house.”
“How was it understood?” Shaheen grated.
The man gave a helpless, eloquent shrug. “Owners of invaluable treasures frequently wish to have duplicates to use if their jewelry will be worn or displayed in less than totally secure conditions.”
“So who approached you from the royal house?” Shaheen asked.
“I wasn’t approached directly. In fact, it was through a quite convoluted method of double blinds.”
“And you still thought this was aboveboard?” Shaheen hissed.
The man was looking more mortified by the moment. “Yes. The rich and royal always wish to hide their true dealings, and it made sense that the royal house would not want it to be known that the duplicates existed. And then, who else could have provided me with all those photographs? Who could afford to pay the astronomical fee I was given?”
“Who indeed.” Shaheen huffed. “But didn’t it seem suspicious that they didn’t entrust their own royal jeweler with the chore?”
The man nodded vigorously. “But I was told Berj was not well, and I even called him to make sure of that. My contacts said they didn’t want to burden him in his state. They also feared if he heard a whiff of this, he’d feel slighted that he’d been bypassed for this assignment, that he’d feel his usefulness to the royal house had come to an end. As a fellow master craftsman, this was even more incentive for me to keep silent than the money I was paid. I appreciated my clients’ need for absolute accuracy more when it was their effort not to tip him off to the fact that he’d be maintaining duplicates. I did warn them that he would know, no matter how accurate the replicas, but I was assured he was in no condition to notice, if I made them close enough.”
She stared at LaSalle, a terrible suspicion spreading through her. She turned to Shaheen only to see it reflected in his eyes.
Then he put it into words. “They were certain of his inability to recognize the fakes because they’ve been drugging him. This explains his deteriorating condition of late. And when he believed there was something wrong with him and started taking medication for his so-called depression, the drug interactions must have caused his heart attack.”
“They could have killed him!” Johara cried out, her heart rattling with rage.
Shaheen gave a solemn nod, eloquent with his determination to punish those responsible for this most of all. “But since they didn’t want a new jeweler, a younger and more vigilant one in his place, they pulled back, counted on his unwarranted medications to confuse him enough for their purposes.”
“This is appalling!” Monsieur LaSalle exclaimed, horror seizing his face. “I’ve been party not only to a fraud, but to almost having a hand in Berj’s death?”
“You are not in any way accountable,” Shaheen assured him. “But we need you to tell us every detail about how you were contacted, how you were paid and how you delivered the duplicates. Any information you give us will be the only leads we have toward apprehending the culprits and returning the real jewels.”
The man exploded to his feet. “You have my full cooperation. And if they approach me again, I will keep playing the game, so they’ll either give me more information or grow secure and do something that will help you expose them.”
After they’d obtained every possible detail from LaSalle, Johara and Shaheen drove straight back to the airport.
As they approached Shaheen’s jet, she saw a black Jaguar parked near its stairs. Amjad and Harres were leaning against it.
As soon as she and Shaheen stepped out of the car, Harres met them. Amjad remained where he was, hips braced against the hood, legs crossed at the ankles and hands deep in his pockets.
“Any news?” Harres asked.
“What we can use only, please,” Amjad interjected.
Shaheen shot him an exasperated glance then answered Harres. “The forger is a reputable jeweler who was duped like the rest of us. He offered to do all he can and promised to keep working with us.”
Amjad sighed. “If you say so. Or is it Johara who does?”
Shaheen ignored him. “The thieves have access to funds on par with us. And they have infiltrated the palace on every level.” He gave Harres the tape with LaSalle’s recorded details. “I think this has enough threads to lead us to the mastermind.”
Harres put the tape in his pocket. “I’ve already started investigating everyone who was in the palace during the past year. But this will narrow down my search. It will narrow down your sweep, too, Amjad.”
Amjad shrugged, the picture of nonchalance. “Why should I narrow it down? I’m having a ball tracing every transaction that occurred in the accounts of everyone who was ever in the palace and cross-referencing those with just about everyone in the region and their dogs. Even after I find the funds exchanged in the conspiracy and the hands that exchanged them, I’m keeping this up. Seems the Pride of Zohayd is not the only treasure to be found here. I’m exposing dozens of priceless secrets. I now have something ruinous on just about everyone, it’s just sublime.”
Harres thumped Amjad on the back. “What he meant by all that is that he, like all of us, is forever in your debt, Johara.”
Johara looked Amjad in the eye. “I’ll accept his gratitude when he actually proves effective in getting the jewels back.”
Amjad’s lethal smile acknowledged her third-person payback. “Oh, I will. But now it’s time to return to Zohayd and face the music. Harres should have stayed back and announced code red. Your wedding has the tribes up in arms. Expect the worst.”