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“Does it look like I’d want or even abide ‘love’?”
His mock affront would have been irresistible if it wasn’t also overwhelmingly goading. She felt just a second away from venting her unearthed frustration in a gnawing, clawing physical attack on this unfeeling monolith!
She exhaled. “That simpering, useless sentiment, huh? No. From what I hear, you want only obedience, blind, mute and dumb.”
His smile was self-satisfaction itself. “And I get it, too. Very useful, and blessedly soothing, for someone in my position.”
“Your mother’s son to the last gene strand, aren’t you?”
“I like to think I’m the updated and improved version.”
His smirk made her want to drag him to her by the hair to taste those heartlessly sensual lips—and to bite them off.
Had he always been this … inflammatory?
He had been exasperating, unyielding in demanding his own way. And getting it. One way or another. Mainly one way. But she’d been so in love—or so in raging, blinding, enslaving lust—that the edge of fury his overriding tactics kept simmering beneath the blissful surface had only made everything she felt for him more explosive.
But now the addiction had been cured. Now that she knew what he was without a trace of the “rationalizing or romanticizing” she’d been guilty of heavily employing, she was reacting to him as she should have all along.
Yeah? With thinly suppressed hostility overlying a barely curbed resurgence of lust?
“Invite me in, Roxanne.”
Her heart choked out another salvo of arrhythmia.
The electrifying invocation he made of his demand, her name.
She swallowed, trying to extricate herself from his influence, damning him and herself for how effortless it was for him, what a struggle it was for her. “You … you want to come in?”
“No, I came to conduct a verbal duel on your doorstep.”
He moved forward and she surged to abort the step that would have taken him over her threshold. “I couldn’t care less what you came to do. But said duel is done. Not so nice of you to drop by, Prince Aal Shalaan. Hope I don’t see you again.”
He resumed his former position, feet braced farther apart, hands in pockets again. “Tsk. All those reports lauding your ability to deal with the most thorny situations and the most exasperating individuals must have been exaggerated.”
“No one factored you in when they were gauging thorny exasperation. Even my super diplomacy powers have a limit.”
“Or maybe I’m your kryptonite.” His smile was now the essence of patience. A hunter with unlimited time to set up his quarry’s downfall. “As much as I enjoyed our opening skirmish out here, I would continue our battle in a more private setting. For your sake, really. You’re the one who lives here. Surely you don’t want your neighbors to witness our … escalations?”
“Since those won’t occur, there’s nothing for them to witness. Nothing but your departing back.” She started to shut the door.
The polished, maple surface met a palm with two-hundred-pounds-plus of sinew, muscle and maleness behind it.
“You know who I am, right?”
Her eyes widened. “You’re pulling rank?”
“You think I use my status to get my way? How boring and juvenile would that be?”
“If you’re not referring to being the all-powerful Prince of Two Kingdoms, what the hell was that threat about?”
“No threat. Just statement of fact. Take all the trappings away and who am I?”
The most magnificent male in history.
Out loud she seethed. “A huge pain?”
The look he gave her had all her hairs standing on end. “The son of the queen of bitches.”
She stared at him. She couldn’t agree more about his mother. But she hadn’t thought he had that brutal clarity about her, either, let alone would admit it.
She exhaled. “That you are.”
Unperturbed, even satisfied by her agreement, his smile widened, raising the voltage of her distress. “So you realize how far I’ll go to gain my objectives. Or do you need a demonstration?”
The seventy-five-hundred-square-foot apartment at her back closed in on her.
“Why is coming in even an objective? If I’ve aroused your confrontational beast, tell it to go back to sleep. We’ve used up all the digs we can make at each other. Anything else would be redundant, and neither of us likes to waste time.”
His shrug was dismissal itself. “First, we’re just getting warmed up. Second, surely you don’t think I’ll allow another abrupt ending between us? Eight years ago, you took me by surprise. And I was young and soft. Third, that was a rhetorical question, right? About why it’s an objective to get inside … your personal space? You do look in the mirror on occasion? And you have an idea of how you look now?”
For the first time, she focused on how she must look. How she felt. Tiny and defenseless without her towering heels, business clothes and makeup, with her hair drying in a rioting jungle around her shoulders. With the added vulnerability of being just a bathrobe away from total nakedness.
She could almost feel his gaze slipping beneath the terry cloth to explore, reminisce and appraise the changes eight years had wrought in the flesh he’d once thoroughly possessed and pleasured.
Judging he’d disrupted her to the desired level, he gestured, encompassing her. “Add all that to the delights of your tongue of mass destruction, and you’re wondering about my motives?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Quote, ‘How creepy can you get,’ unquote. You think I’ll invite a man twice my size, twenty times as strong and two million times as powerful in every other way into my ‘personal space,’ after he’s made his lewd intentions clear?”
His face lost all lightness. “You think you won’t be safe with me?”
Haidar might be many things, but to women he would always be master through pleasure, not pain; seduction, not coercion.
Unable to get rid of him that way, she exhaled. “No. But you are trying to persist your way in when I don’t want you here.”
A smile transformed his face back to the supreme male who knew the exact level of estrogen overproduction he commanded in females. “You do. I remember, in unfailing detail, how you want, Roxanne. My knowledge of your mind may be deficient, especially with eight years of maturity and experience, but your body hasn’t changed, and I know everything about it. I can sense its every nuance, decipher its every signal.”
She wrestled with the overwhelming urge to knee him.
Knowledge glittered in his eyes, threatened to snap her control. “My sudden appearance rattled you. That made you defensive, and that made you angry. You want me to go only so you can regroup.”
One little kneeing. Surely it wouldn’t be too damaging. To her position.
His grin was designed to loosen her restraint another notch. “But you can get yourself together while I’m around. I’ll make myself a cup of tea until you do. You can even dress if you must. If you need the fortification of clothes, that is.”
“How condescending can you get?”
He inclined his head. “Condescending is several steps up from creepy. I must be evolving after all.”
“The jury will remain out on that.” He leaned more comfortably against her door frame, as if preparing to spend hours hanging around until he achieved his “objective.” She looked pointedly at the foot strategically placed across the threshold. “But I still advise you to leave now. You need your beauty sleep to deal with what awaits you here. I heard you were approached for a job. The top job.”
His expression remained unchanged, but she could feel his surprise. And dismay. He had hoped that was still a secret. Why?
He finally jerked one formidable shoulder. “News still travels faster than a speeding bullet around here. As well as rumors, exaggerations and fabrications.”
“This isn’t any of those. It’s why you’re here.”
His lips quirked. “And if I tell you I’m here for you?”
“I’d say that’s bull. I’ll also issue you further advice. My neighbors are always coming and going and receiving tons of visitors at all times. You’re a famous figure, and I bet if someone sees you standing on the doorstep of a woman in a bathrobe—one who’s leaving you standing there, to boot—the footage will be on the internet in minutes and will go viral in hours. Not a prudent way to start your campaign for the throne.”
He pretended to worry for a moment before he grinned again. “See? You progressed to giving me strategy advice. You can do that much better when we slip into a more comfortable … environment.”
She exhaled. “Very mature. Go away, Haidar.”
He folded his arms over his chest. “Why?”
Why? “You want the reasons alphabetized?”
“Just pull out a random one.”
“Because I want you to.”
“We already established that’s a false claim.”
“I have no interest in what you established, and no intention of arguing its merit.”
“Your prerogative. Mine is waiting until you give me a reason I can accept.”
“Who says you have to accept anything?”
He cocked his head, his steel-dawn eyes taking on a thoughtful cast. “Still getting back at me for ‘summoning you like a lackey’ and daring to presume I have a ‘claim’ to you?”
She balled her fists. “Use that infallible memory of yours and remember that there was nothing to get back at you for. It just …”
“Put you off. Aih, I remember. But you can’t have been cringing ever since. And you’re not doing so now. This is the very healthy reaction of the hot-blooded spitfire I was afraid had disappeared, from all reports of the imperturbable goddess of analysis and mediation you’ve become.”
This was so unfair. That he could debate as superlatively as he did everything else. But she was no slouch in that department.
Before she could find anything to say to back up that claim, he said, “With that out of the way, repeat after me. ‘It’s all in the past, and will you please come in, Haidar?’”
“It’s all in the past, and will you please go away, Haidar?”
He unfolded his arms, braced his hands on his hips. “You think it’s a possibility I will? I’m beginning to lose faith in the clarity of your insight and the accuracy of your projections.”
She gritted her teeth. Exchanging barbs was like quicksand. The more she said, the further she sank. She’d say no more.
He gave her one last brooding glance. Then he turned around.
He—he was … leaving?
She watched him walk away, got a more comprehensive view of his … assets as he receded. Just looking at him had longing clamping her chest.
He was messing with her. Haidar didn’t give up. He didn’t know how.
But he was now at the far end of the hall that led to the elevators. He was really leaving.
Before he made the left that would take him out of sight, he stopped. Her heart revved a jumble of beats. Would he …?
He turned, rang the bell of her farthest neighbor.
What the hell …?
Without stopping, he continued retracing his steps, stopped by the second-farthest apartment, ringing its bell, too. Without slowing down this time, he did the same at her closest neighbor’s.
Then he moved to the middle of the hall, semifacing her, calmly sweeping his gaze across all the doors.
Before his actions could sink in, one door opened. Two seconds later, another did. The last followed.
Then her neighbors—and, just her luck, the female components only—stood staring at Haidar. Their wariness at having their bells rung without a preceding intercom alert turned to amazement as recognition dawned.
Haidar let them marinate in it before he said, “Sorry for disturbing you, ladies. I wasn’t sure which apartment I wanted.”
Roxanne’s jaw dropped. Or dropped farther. Where had that accent come from? He sounded like a redneck!
“Oh, my God! You’re him!” Susan Gray, the forty-something CEO of the Azmaharian branch of a multinational construction company, babbled like a teenager. “You’re Prince Haidar Aal Shalaan!”
Haidar shook his regal head, making his mane undulate in a swish of silk—on purpose, she was sure. “Oh, I’m just his doppelgänger. I was paid five grand online by some lady who wants to act out her fantasy of dominating him. I usually come for less, but I charged extra since she wants to get real kinky. I was given this address, the floor, but not the number of the condo. So which of you has a thing for this Haidar guy?”
Her neighbors gaped at him, at each other, then finally, at her. She was the one in the bathrobe, after all.
Her brain was too zapped to function. But she had to. If she didn’t do something, this … this … madman would demolish her image. And his own.
She staggered out of her apartment, her perspiring bare feet making her advance on the polished marble precarious.
He watched her with feigned uncertainty. “Oh, it’s you?” His gaze swept her with what looked like earnest assessment. “I somehow thought you wouldn’t be a babe. So why can’t you find guys to dominate the regular way? Hey … you’re not nuts, are you?”
He looked to her neighbors for confirmation as she stumbled the last step to him, grabbed him by the lapel of his jacket.
He pretended to ward her off. “Whoa, lady. The deal is degradation in private. Public displays will cost you extra.”
She grimaced at her neighbors, expending all her restraint on not thumping the huge lout. “Sorry, ladies. Haidar is an old friend, regretfully. I left him eight years ago without a sense of humor, but it seems he’s contracted some terminal prankster disease. He thinks this is a fun way to say long time no see.”
She was dragging him toward her apartment while she talked, for the second time in her life wishing grounds yawned open and swallowed people. The other time had also involved him.
He resisted her, looked back at her neighbors imploringly. “I don’t know this dame. Is she dangerous?” She smacked him hard on the arm. “Hey! We agreed on domination, not abuse!”
The son of a literal royal bitch was making the situation worse with every word out of his mouth.
