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“I want you out of my system,” he told her, his voice urgent and deep. Commanding, because he meant it more than he had just moments before. Because he was desperate. He needed a queen and he needed heirs, and she was what kept him from doing that duty. He had to erase the hold she had on him! “Once and for all. I want one night.”
One night.
Jessa stared at Tariq in shock for a moment, as the impossible words shimmered between them like heat. The breathtaking strength of his hard chest against her palm made her whole arm ache, and the ache radiated through her, kicking up brushfires everywhere it touched. Her mind could not seem to process what he’d said, but her body had no such difficulty. She felt her breasts swell in reaction, her nipples hardening into tight, nearly painful points that she was grateful he couldn’t possibly see beneath the wool sweater she’d thrown on earlier. Between her legs, she ached, even as her body readied itself for him. Awareness, thick and heavy and intoxicating, thrummed through her. She was electric.
And he was watching her.
Jessa could no longer bear his proximity. And why was she still touching him? Why had she let the moment draw out? No longer caring that he might see it as a victory—only needing space between them—she snatched her hand away from the heat of his body and moved to the other side of the room. There was only her coffee table between them when she stopped, but it was something. It made her feel slightly less hysterical, slightly less likely to pretend the past five years had never happened and fling herself into his arms. How had she lost control of herself so quickly?
“I beg your pardon,” she began in her stiffest, most formal tone.
“Do you?” he interrupted her, leaning so nonchalantly against her mantel, so big and dark and terrifying, with all of that disconcerting, green-eyed attention focused intently upon her. He was like her own personal fallen angel, come to take her even further into the abyss. She had to remember why she could not let him. “Do not beg my pardon when there are so many more interesting things you could beg me for.”
He was so seductive even when she knew better. Or perhaps it was only that she was so susceptible and weak where he was concerned. She could feel his hands on her, though he had not moved. Her palm itched with the need to soothe itself against the steellike muscles of his chest once more. How could her body want him, still? She had been so sure she was over him, finally. She had been certain of it. She had even, recently, begun to imagine a future in which Tariq was not the shadow over her life, but a bittersweet memory.
“You must be joking,” she said, because that was what she might say if her body wasn’t staging a full-scale revolt—if, in fact, she felt as she ought to feel toward this man. It had taken her five years to get over him once. What would it be like a second time? It didn’t bear considering.
“I assure you, I have no sense of humor at all where you are concerned,” he said.
Somehow, she believed him. And yet there was a certain gleam in his dark eyes that convinced her she was better off not knowing exactly what he meant by that remark.
“Then you are insane,” she declared. “I would no more spend one night with you then I would prance naked down Parliament Street!”
As she heard it echo around her lounge, it occurred to her that a wise woman might not have used the word naked in front of this man, in defiance of this man. Tariq did not seem to move, and yet at the same time he seemed to grow larger. Taller, darker, more. As if he blocked all the exits and kept her chained where she stood, all because he willed it. How did he do such a thing? Had he always been so effortlessly irresistible? In her memories, he had taken over every room he had ever entered with the sheer force of his magnetism, but she had supposed that to be her own infatuation at play, not anything he did himself.
“What I mean,” she said when he simply studied her in that hawkish, blood-stirring way that made her mouth go dry and made her wonder if she might be more his prey than she knew, than she wanted to know. “What I mean is that of course I will not spend a night with you. There is far too much water under the bridge. I’m surprised you would ask.”
“Are you?” He looked supremely unconcerned. Imperial. A brow arched. “I did not ask.”
Of course he had not actually asked. Because he was the King of Nur. He did not need to ask. He needed only to incline his head and whatever he desired was flung at his feet, begging for the chance to serve him. Hadn’t she done the same five years ago?
He had no more than glanced at her across the busy office that fateful day and Jessa had been his. Just like that. It had been that immediate and all-consuming. She had not even waited for him to approach her. As if she was a moth drawn inexplicably and inexorably to the flame that would be the death of her, she had risen to her feet and then walked toward him without so much as a thought, without even excusing herself from the conversation she was taking part in. She had no memory of moving, or choosing to go to him. He had merely looked at her with his dark sorcerer’s eyes and she had all but thrown herself at him.
And that had been while he was playing his game of pretending to be a doctor’s son with some family money, but otherwise of interest to no one. Now he was no longer hiding—now he was a king. No wonder he seemed so much more powerful, so much more alluring, so much more devastating.
“Then you have saved me the trouble of refusing you,” Jessa said, fighting to keep her voice calm, with all the tension ratcheting through her. “Good thing you did not bother to ask.”
“Why do you refuse?” Tariq asked quietly, straightening from the mantel. It was as if he stepped directly into her personal space, crowding her, though he was still all the way across the room. Jessa eased away from him, from the powerful energy he seemed to exude like some kind of force field, but she had to stop when the backs of her knees hit the couch.
You cannot run, she warned herself. He would only chase you. And you must think of Jeremy. You must!
“Why do you want one night?” Jessa retorted. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her trousers, trying to look calm even if she didn’t feel it. “And why now? Five years is a bit too long for me to believe you’ve been carrying a torch.” She laughed at the very idea, the sound dying off when he only looked at her, a truth shimmering in his dark gaze that she refused to accept.
“I told you that I must marry.” He shrugged, as if a lifelong commitment was no more interesting to him than a speck of dust. Perhaps it was not. “But first I wanted to make sure you were no longer a factor. You can understand this, can’t you?”
“I would have thought I ceased being any kind of factor some time ago,” Jessa said. Was her tone the dry, sophisticated sort of tone she’d aimed for? She feared it was rather more bitter than that, and bit her lower lip slightly, wishing she could take it back.
Tariq rubbed at his chin with one hand, still watching her closely, intently, as if he could see directly into her.
“Who can say why certain things haunt a man?” He dropped his eyes. “After my uncle died, my life was no longer my own. My every breath and every thought was of necessity about my country. It was not enough simply to accept the crown. I had to learn how to wear it.” He shook his head slightly, as if he had not meant to say something so revealing. He frowned. “But as it became clear that I could not delay my own marriage further, I knew I could not marry with this history hanging over me. And so I resolved to find you. It is not a complicated story.”
This time, when he looked at her, his dark green eyes were even more unreadable than before.
“You expect me to believe that you…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it, it was too absurd. “There is no history hanging over us!”
“You are the only woman who has ever left me,” he told her. His tone was soft, but there was a hard, watchful gleam in his gaze. “You left an impression.”
“I did not leave you!” she gritted out. There was no way to explain why she had gone incommunicado for those days—she who had rarely been out of his sight for the wild, desperate weeks of their affair.
“So you say.” He shrugged, but his attention never left her face. “Call it what you wish. You were the only one to do it.”
“And this has led you to track me down all these years later,” Jessa said softly. She shook her head. “I cannot quite believe it.”
The air around them changed. Tightened.
“Can you not?” he asked, and there was something new in his voice—something she could not recognize though she knew in a sudden panic that she should. That her failure to recognize it was a serious misstep.
Satisfaction, she thought with abrupt insight, but it was too late.
He crossed the room, rounded the coffee table in a single step and pulled her into his arms.
“Tariq—” she began, panicked, but she had no idea what she meant to say. All she could feel were his arms like steel bands around her, his chest like a wall of fire against hers. And all she could see was his hard face, lit with an emotion she could not name, serious as he looked down at her for a long, breathless moment.
“Believe this,” he said, and fitted his mouth to hers.
CHAPTER FIVE
JESSA’S world spun, until she no longer knew if she stood or if she fell, and the mad thing was that she didn’t much care either way.
Not as she wanted to. Not as she should.
Tariq’s hard, hot mouth moved on hers and she forgot everything. She forgot all the reasons she should not touch him or go near him at all. She forgot why she needed to get rid of him as quickly as possible, so that he could never find out her secrets. So that he could not hurt her again as easily as he’d done before.
None of that seemed to matter any longer. All she cared about was his mouth. All she wanted was more.
He knew exactly how to kiss her, how best to make her head spin in dizzy circles. Long, drugging strokes as he tasted her, sampling her mouth with his, angling his head for a better, sweeter fit.
“Yes,” she murmured, barely recognizing her own voice.
Sensation chased sensation, almost too much to bear. His strong hands moved over her, one flexed into the thick mass of her hair at the nape of her neck while the other splayed across the small of her back, pressing her hips against his. His clever, arousing mouth moved slick and hot against hers. Fire. Heat. Awe. The potent mix of vibrant memory and new, stunning sensation. Touching him was the same, and yet so very different. He tasted like some heady mix of spices, strong and not quite sweet, and she was drunk on it, on him, in seconds.
She could feel him everywhere, pumping through her veins, wrapped around each beat of her heart as it pounded a hectic rhythm against her chest. How had she lived without this for so long? She could not get close enough to him. She could not breathe without breathing him in. She could not stop touching him.
She let her hands explore him, trailing down the length of his impossibly carved torso, like something sculpted in marble, though his skin seemed to blaze with heat beneath her hands. He was nothing as cold as stone. He was so big, bigger than she remembered, and huskier. His strong shoulders were far wider than his narrow hips, his muscles hard from some kind of daily use. She traced patterns across the breadth of his lean back, feeling his strength and his power in her palms.
Tariq muttered something she could not understand. His hands stroked down the length of her back to cup her bottom, urging her closer until she was pressed tight against his thighs and the rock-hard maleness between them. She gasped. She felt her core melt and tremble against him. He sighed slightly, as if in relief. Jessa heard a distant crooning sound and realized, only dimly, that it came from her.
And still, he kissed her. Again and again. As if he could not stop. As if he, too, remembered that it had always been this way between them—this dizzying, terrifying rush of lust and need and now. Jessa could not seem to shake the memories that scrolled through her mind, each more sensual than the last, or the shocking fact that this was real, that they were doing this, all these years later.
She could not think. She could not imagine why she should think.
She twined her arms around his neck, arching her back to press her swollen, tender breasts against the hard planes of his chest, tilting her head back to give him better access. He did not disappoint. He broke from her mouth, his breathing harsh, and kissed his way down her cheek, her neck. His mouth was like a hot brand against her skin.
“More,” he whispered, and his hands went to the hem of her sweater, pulling it up past her hips, then pausing when he uncovered her breasts. He looked at them for a long moment, as if drinking them in. Then he caressed each puckered nipple and tight globe in turn, shaping them through the camisole she wore, while Jessa moaned in mindless, helpless pleasure. Her sex ached, and she could feel an answering heat behind her eyes. She felt burned alive, eaten whole. She wanted more than his hands. She wanted.
Muttering a curse, Tariq stripped the sweater from her body, guiding her head through the opening with his strong, sure hands. He tossed it aside without glancing at it, and then paused for a moment to look down at her, his hard eyes gleaming in the gray morning light. The expression she read there made her belly clench, and pulse to a low, wild drum within.
Jessa’s nipples stood at attention, tight and begging for his mouth. She could feel the hungry, restless heat in her core, begging for his mouth, his hand, his sex. Even her mouth was open slightly and softened, swollen from his kisses, begging for more of the same.
Could actual begging be far behind? How soon before she was right where she swore she’d never be again—literally on her knees, perhaps? Clutching desperately at him as he walked away once more?
The thought was like cold water. A slap. Jessa blinked, and sanity returned with an unwelcome thump, jarring her.
She staggered backward, away from him, out of reach of his dangerous hands. How could she have let this happen? How could she have allowed him to touch her like this?
Again, she thought wildly. How can he do this again?
“Stop,” she managed to say, pushing the word out through the hectic frenzy that still seized her. He had broken her heart five years ago. What would he do this time? What else could he break? It had taken all these years to come to a place of peace about everything that happened, and here she was, tumbling right back into his arms again, just like before.
She hadn’t believed that he could want her then, and she didn’t believe it now, not deep inside of herself. She had never known what game he had been playing and what had led a man like him to notice someone like her. And here she was, much older and wiser, about to make the same mistake all over again! Just like last time, he would leave her when he was finished with her. And he would finish with her, of that she had no doubt. The only question was how much of herself she would turn over to him in the meantime, and how far she would have to go to get herself back when he left her, shattered once more.
No. She could not do this again. She would not.
“You do not want to stop,” he said in that dark, rich voice that sent her nerve endings into a joyful dance and made her that much more resolute. “You only think that you do. Why think?”
“Why, indeed?” she asked ruefully, trying to pull herself together. She stood up straight, and smoothed her palms over the mess of her hair. She was afraid to look into the mirror on the far wall. She felt certain she didn’t wish to know how she looked just now. Wanton and on the brink of disaster, no doubt.
“Whatever else passed between us, there is still this,” Tariq continued, just short of adamant. “How can we ignore it?”
His voice tugged at her, as if it was something more than sex for him. As if it could ever be anything more than that, with this man! Why hadn’t she learned her lesson?
“I won’t deny that I’m still attracted to you,” Jessa said carefully, determined that her inner turmoil should not come out in her voice. That she should somehow transmit a calmness she did not feel. “But we are adults, Tariq. We are not required to act on every last feeling.”
“We are not required to, no,” Tariq replied smoothly, a perfect echo of the easy, tempting lover he had been before, always willing to pursue passion above all else. It was how he had lived his life. He even smiled now, as if he was still that man. “But perhaps we should.”
Jessa took a moment to reach over and draw her sweater toward her, trying to take deep, calming breaths. She pulled it back over her head as if it were armor and might protect her. She smoothed the scratchy wool material down over her hips, and then adjusted the heavy copper spill of her hair, pushing it back over her shoulders. Then she realized she was fidgeting. He would read far too much into it, and so she stilled herself.
How could she want him, as if it were no more than a chemical decision, outside of her control? Yes, of course, he was a devastatingly handsome man. There was no denying it. If he were a stranger and she saw him on the street, Jessa would no doubt find him enthralling. Captivating. But he was not a stranger. He was Tariq bin Khaled Al-Nur. She knew him too well, and she had every reason in the world to be effectively allergic to him. Instead, she melted all over him and had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from asking for more.
Begging for more, even.
She wanted to be furious with herself. But what she was, instead, was terrified. Of her own responses, her own reaction to him. Not even of Tariq himself.
“I thought perhaps you wished to talk about something of import,” she said, sounding merely prim to her own ears, when she wanted to sound tough. She cleared her throat and then indicated the two of them with her hand. “This is not something I want. It’s not something I need in my life, do you understand?”
“Is your life so full, then?” His dark eyes bored into her. His mouth was serious, flat and firm. “You never think of the past?”
“My life is full enough that the past has no place.” She raised her chin, a bolt of pride streaking through her as she thought about how she had changed since he had known her. In ways both seen and unseen, but she knew the difference. She wondered if he could see those differences, but then told herself it hardly mattered. “It would not seem so to a king, I imagine, but I am proud of my life. It’s simple and it’s mine. I built it from scratch, literally.”
“And you think I cannot understand this? That I cannot grasp what it is to build a life from nothing?” He shifted his weight, reminding Jessa that they were standing far too close to the sofa, and that it would be much too easy to simply fall backward and take him with her, letting him crush her so deliciously against the sofa cushions with his—
Enough! she ordered herself. You cannot allow yourself to get carried away with him!
“I know you cannot possibly understand,” she replied. She moved then, rounding the coffee table and putting more space between them. She had always thought her sitting room was reasonably sized, a bit roomy, even. Now it felt like the inside of a closet. Or a small box. She felt there was nowhere she could go that he could not reach her, should he wish to. She felt trapped, hemmed in. Hunted. So why did something in her rejoice in it? “Just as I do not pretend to understand the daily life of the ruler of a country. How could I? It is beyond imagination.”
“Tell me, then,” he said, tracking her as she moved toward the window, then changed direction. “Tell me what it is like to be Jessa Heath.”
“How could I possibly interest you?” she demanded, stopping in her tracks. She threw him an incredulous look. “Why would you want to know anything so mundane?”
“You would be surprised at the things I want to know.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his dark jeans and considered her for a moment. Once more, Jessa was certain there was more going on than met the eye. As if, beneath those smooth words he hid sharp edges that she could only sense but not quite hear. “I have told you that you have haunted me across the years, yet you do not believe it. Perhaps if you told me more about yourself, I would find you less fascinating.”
“I am a simple woman, with a simple life,” she told him, her voice crackling with a kick of temper that she did not entirely understand. She didn’t believe that he was mocking her. But neither did she believe that she could have fascinated him. With what? Her utter spinelessness? Or had he truly believed that she had left him and was one of those men who only wanted what he thought out of reach?
“If you are as proud of this life as you claim, why should you conceal it?” he asked, too reasonably. Too seductively. “Why not seek to sing it from the rooftops instead?”
Frustrated, Jessa looked away for a moment, and felt goose bumps rise along her arms. She crossed them in front of her and tried to rub at her shoulders surreptitiously. She just wanted him to leave. Surely once he did, everything would settle back into place, as if he had never been.
“I would think you as likely to be interested in watching paint dry as in the life and times of an ordinary Yorkshire woman,” she said in a low voice.
“It is possible, I think, that you do not know me as well as you believe you do,” Tariq said in a haughty, aristocratic voice. No doubt he used this exact tone when ordering his subjects about. No doubt they all genuflected at the sound of it. But Jessa was not one of his subjects.
“My life is not a great story,” she threw at him, daring him to judge her and find her lacking, yet knowing he could not fail to do so. “I wake up in the morning and I go to work. I like my job and I’m good at it. My boss is kind. I have friends, neighbors. I like where I live. I am happy.” She could feel the heat in her eyes, and hoped he would think it was nothing more than vehemence. She wished she could convince herself of it. “What did you expect? That my life would be nothing but torment and disaster without you?”
His mouth moved, though he did not speak. It was tempting to tell him exactly how much she had suffered, and why—but she knew better. If he did not know too much already, then he could not know about Jeremy, ever. What was done was done. Tariq might think she did not know him, but she knew enough to be certain that he would handle that news in only one, disastrous way. And if he was only going to disappear again—and she knew without a single doubt that he was—she knew she couldn’t risk telling him about Jeremy.
“Please go,” she said quietly. She couldn’t look at him. “I don’t know why you came to find me, Tariq, but it’s enough now. We did not require a reunion. You must leave.”
“I leave tonight,” he said after a moment, and her gaze snapped to his, startled. “You seem skeptical,” he taunted her softly. “I am devastated that you find me so untrustworthy. Or is it that you did not expect me to go?”
“I hope you found what you were looking for here,” she said, unable to process the various emotions that buffeted her. Intense, all-encompassing relief. Suspicion. And a pang of something she refused to call loss. “It was not necessary to dredge up ancient history, however.”
“I am not so sure I agree,” Tariq mused. His mouth looked so hard and incapable of the drugging kisses she knew he could wield with it. “Have dinner with me, tonight.” He paused. Then, as an afterthought, as if he was unused to the word, he added, “Please.”
Jessa realized she was holding her breath, and let it out.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said, frowning, but more at herself than at him. Why did something in her want to have dinner with him—to prolong the agony? What could she possibly have to gain? Especially when there was so much to lose—namely, her head and her heart?
“If it is a good idea or a bad one, what does it matter?” Tariq shrugged. “I have told you I am leaving. One dinner, that is all. Is that too much to ask? For old time’s sake?”
Jessa knew she should refuse him, but then what would he do? Show up here again when she least expected it? Somehow, the idea of him in her house at night seemed far more dangerous—and look what had happened already in broad daylight! She could not let him come back here. And if that meant one more uncomfortable interaction, maybe it was worth it. She was a grown woman who had told herself for years now that she had been an infatuated child when she’d met Tariq, and that the agony of losing him had been amplified by the baby she had carried. It had never occurred to her that seeing him again might stir up such strong feelings. It had never crossed her mind that she could still harbor any feelings for him! Maybe it was all for the best that she finally faced them.
And anyway, it was in public. How dangerous could even Tariq be in a roomful of other people?
In the back of her mind, something whispered a warning, but it was too late. Her mouth was already open.
“Fine,” she said. It was for the right reasons, she told herself. It would bring closure, no more and no less than that. “I will have dinner with you, but that is all. Only dinner.”
But she was not certain she believed herself. Maybe she could not be trusted any more than he could.
