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He swallowed his shock at how swiftly lust rose through him.
Her breath fell in rough exhales while a tight stiffness entered her body. He held her loosely enough to not threaten her, leaving it in her hands if she wanted to move away. Other hand sliding to her waist, he exerted enough pressure to bring her closer to him.
Gorgeous brown eyes widened into innocent pools. Very likely, the vulnerability in her eyes was a well-rehearsed act, but still it turned him on incredibly. Pursuing one sophisticated woman after the other, sleeping with women who knew the score, Zayn had forgotten, or maybe he had never known, how hot this kind of vulnerability was.
He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to make her all flustered again. He wanted to see if she would taste sweet as her soft sigh said or tart as her words suggested. When it came to women, Zayn had always taken what he wanted, pursued models and actresses ruthlessly. He wasn’t going to let this rough-around-the-edges woman slip past him.
“I’m going to kiss you, Amalia. This is your moment to go all outraged on me and call me a savage beast.”
If possible, she stiffened even more in his hold. “I...refuse to provide you with any more entertainment. I was right in thinking that you would be just as bloated and corrupt with power as—”
* * *
Whatever outrage Amalia had amassed to fight the man’s autocratic ideas and her own out-of-control senses, all of it disappeared as Zayn’s mouth touched hers.
The scent and taste of him was an overwhelming assault on her senses. He tasted of mint and some dark potency that stirred everything in her to waking. Heat poured through her in rivulets as he pressed one tender kiss after the other, from one corner of her mouth to the other. The softness of his mouth—who could know such a hard man could have such soft lips?—was a delicious contrast against the rough scrape of his jaw, tugging Amalia’s senses this way and that.
If he had kissed her with the aggressiveness she sensed within him, or if he had employed that sensual mastery that had made him a favorite lover of women, maybe she would’ve resisted.
But instead the soft flick of his tongue against the seam of her lips, the kisses punctured by the sweetest endearments in Arabic, Amalia melted like an ice cube on a hot and sultry Khaleej summer day. He tasted her as if he was dying to probe all her beguiling secrets; he kissed her as if she were a treasure he had just discovered.
This supposed connoisseur of women requested entry into her mouth as if she was the most enchanting woman he had ever met. And sensible, rational, rarely discomposed Amalia fell for it all. She eagerly opened her mouth under his questing one.
And just like that, the tenor of the kiss changed. It went from a pleasant seaside breeze to an intense scorching heat wave. His tongue swiped over the moist recesses of her mouth, teasing and taunting her tongue to play with him. The stroke of his tongue over hers released a dampness between her thighs. It was what he had done with words, too. He had somehow provoked her, called the part of her that she didn’t even know existed, made her revel in the moment, made her prolong what was only a dangerous charade.
He was seducing her mind.
He was doing that now, too. It was as if he knew to soften his aggressiveness for her, to slowly draw her out instead of demand. At least until she came to him of her own volition.
With a shamefully wanton moan, she sank her fingers into his hair and pushed herself closer to him. She sucked his tongue into her mouth just as he had done with her.
Large hands roved over her body now, tracing the ridges of her shoulders, the line of her spine, setting every nerve ending on fire. Urgent and aggressive, he stroked every inch of her to the same need. Amalia had never felt like this before and she didn’t know how to stop it, how to gain control over herself or this madness that had overtaken her.
All she knew was that she never wanted to stop.
Her mouth stung and her nipples peaked to tight points, grazed again and again by the hard contours of his chest. His hungry hands finally stilled on her waist and he pulled her even closer. Mouth left hers, giving her a chance to breathe. “Point proven. You can huff and puff and act outraged but truly, you want me. And you can’t see how all your self-control and rules about needing respect and recognition before attraction are out the window already. That’s what all this feminist bluster is about, isn’t it?
“It’s not about my double standards but about your own conflict in wanting me when you do not want to.”
If he had slapped her, Amalia couldn’t have been more shocked. It was like being drenched in an ice bath to douse her overheated senses. Still, her body throbbed in all these newly aware places, slow to cool down.
With a disgusted growl, she pushed away from him and turned around. Lungs burned as if she had run a long distance, her mind blank under the onslaught of such heady pleasure.
She rubbed her palm roughly against her stinging lips as if she could get rid of his taste. A horrified sound escaped her mouth. Dear God, she couldn’t believe she’d been kissing the Sheikh of Khaleej.
The thought of her twin rotting in that jail cell while she played ridiculous games with the man who held his fate in his hand made nausea whirl up through her throat. How could she have forgotten Aslam so thoroughly?
How had she gone from asking for help to a harmless pretense to climbing all over him like a vine?
“You’re offended by the kiss. But I will not apologize for doing something both of us wanted.”
She whirled around, his self-assured words scraping at her. Could she blame him for thinking she was putty in his hands? “I’m not just offended. I’m disgusted with myself.”
He laughed again. And this time the sound was redolent with mockery. “Because you got what you came for? Or because you enjoyed the kiss thoroughly?”
“What I came for?”
“You and I both know that you’re not suitable to be my wife in any way or form. So the only conclusion I draw from your being here is that you came seeking an affair. It is not a secret, anymore, that I treat my women well.”
The gall of the man to think she had expressly come so that she could lure him into an affair. Was there anything bigger in the world than the man’s ego? “You mean you pay them for sex?” she hurled at him.
His mouth curled, a hardness entering his eyes. “I do not like games, Ms. Christensen. I do not find affected outrage of the kind you’re displaying attractive at all. If you find my conclusion that offensive, why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”
This was it, her opening. To prolong hiding the truth meant resigning Aslam’s life to the jail cell for who knew how long. And yet, Amalia hesitated.
Something in the glittering gaze, in the sensual but hard contours of his mouth, told her he wasn’t going to like it. He wasn’t going to forgive her easily and then offer to help with Aslam. She might have made it worse if the sheikh thought she’d made a fool of him.
She was completely screwed.
“I did not come here hoping to marry you. In fact, I don’t think there’s a couple in the entire world more unsuited to each other for marriage.”
His hands behind his back, he looked at her as if she was one of his subjects. “My sentiments exactly. So I see only one reason why you would be on Ms. Young’s list.”
“No... I’m not one of the candidates lined up for your pleasure by Ms. Young. I would never allow myself to be presented like prize cattle for viewing.”
His hardened jaw told Amalia she was only making it worse, but she couldn’t stop. “I figured that much, too. Which is why I have to believe that you came here seeking a different kind of alliance.”
“I’m not here for an affair with you.”
“No?”
“A hundred times no. I came to meet with a state official about my brother Aslam’s case. I have spent two months dragging myself from one state office to the other, hoping someone would listen to me. He is in jail for—”
“Ah...so you’re a family of criminals, then?” His eyes were cold, flinty, his mouth a study in utter distaste. “Brother goes to jail, and sister inveigles herself into the palace under false pretenses. Is your father really a historian? Is anything you told me the truth?”
Amalia flinched. Her credibility was zero with him and she had no one but herself to blame. She softened her tone, hoping it would appeal to his good side. If he had one. “All I did was tell a white lie. No, I didn’t even do that. I just didn’t clear it up. I...couldn’t pass up the opportunity—”
“Opportunity to do what? To get into the sheikh’s chamber? To present yourself as a temptation?”
He looked so threatening right then, Amalia could practically feel the power coming off him. Utterly different from the man who had kissed her so tenderly, even from the man who’d laughed so openly. “Of course not! I don’t want to kiss you much less want an affair with you. I have a successful career and do not need any favors from a man like you, whether given freely or in exchange for something else.”
She now realized how fooled she’d been by the Celebrity Spy! Article, too. Having read about the sheikh’s escapades and orgy fests, she’d decided in her head that he was someone she could persuade and plead with.
But the man who stared at her with those inscrutably brilliant eyes didn’t have a soft bone in his body. The last thing he looked like right now was a self-indulgent, reckless playboy the exposé had called him.
“I intended nothing like that. I was tired of waiting and I snuck in here out of pure panic. When I realized who you were, for a few minutes, I even completely forgot...” She flicked her eyes closed for a second. Not everything had to be revealed now, even if he knew what her reaction had been to him. Opening her eyes, she willed her tone to be matter-of-fact. “Aslam has been imprisoned unfairly for something he was only a marginal part of. He was angry at life and reckless and irresponsible.”
“How old are you, Ms. Christensen?”
Amalia couldn’t figure out what he was getting at. “That’s neither here nor there.”
“I can have your entire history in my hands in ten minutes.”
Domineering ass! “Twenty-six, Your Highness.”
“It’s a little late to be all deferential, yes?” He folded his hands and leaned against the table. The crossing of his ankles stretched the black trousers tight against the length of his thighs, and Amalia had to force herself to pull her gaze up.
When was her body going to move past the fact that the man was insanely, knee-meltingly gorgeous and a domineering, arrogant tyrant who thought every woman was out to ensnare him?
“So your brother is, too. You know what I was doing at that age, Ms. Christensen?”
Partying with your groupies, she wanted to say, but she held her tongue.
He smiled then, as if he was perfectly aware that she was biting down on her tongue. Hard. “For three decades, there have been constant skirmishes between Khaleej and our neighboring country. I was at a weeklong summit, working nights and days to sign a peace treaty that would end useless bloodshed. Once the treaty was signed, I partied, hard. Your brother is not a teenager. He has to face the consequences of his actions.”
“He doesn’t deserve to spend the next decade in jail when the actual perpetrator—”
“What is your twin in jail for?”
How she wished she could offer a different answer, to stop the guilty flush from climbing up her neck...“Possession of illegal substances, with intent to sell.”
Instant judgment pursed his mouth tight. Her heart sank. “There’s nothing I can do about it. Sentences for drug possession and distribution are meant to be harsh. He shouldn’t have been using if he doesn’t have the constitution for jail. And really, to send his sister to—”
Amalia covered his mouth with her hand, rage burning through her. And yet, seeing her white knuckles against his golden skin sent a shock through her, too. As did the warmth of his mouth searing through her palm. “I didn’t come here to sell myself just to save my brother.”
Long fingers gripped her wrist and pushed her away. “No?”
“I came hoping that your administration was a fair one. Even after I saw you and realized what you thought, I kept quiet because I thought you would be fair like you promised.”
Tears threatened and Amalia pushed them back. No way was she going to cry in front of the callous man. He was picking his own damn wife from a marriage mart, like he was picking an outfit for the next week. The minute she’d realized that, she should’ve known he was going to have no sympathy for her case. It was clear Sheikh Zayn Al-Ghamdi had no heart. “I should’ve known when I spoke to your cousin that you’d be no better than him.
“Aslam is serving the sentence for what your cousin did. He took that package from him because he couldn’t refuse someone ‘so cool,’ in his words, and yes, because my brother is a reckless, foolish idiot who didn’t know who he was trusting. Your government is bloated with corruption and no wonder Celebrity Spy! exposed the truth of you like that.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire Al-Ghamdi family is a bunch of corrupt, drug-trafficking, womanizing men bloated with power.”
CHAPTER THREE (#u9495182e-6a72-53c8-b498-4a8e177458ce)
“THAT IS ENOUGH, Ms. Christensen,” Zayn retorted in a tone that would brook no more nonsense. “It is my family, the royal house of Al-Ghamdi that you speak of.”
“And you’re above law, is that it?”
“My family has its share of hangers-on and lazy fools, Ms. Christensen, like anyone else’s,” he added drily and had the satisfaction of seeing her flush.
He had always thought his cousin fell into that category.
A harmless one though...
No one in his entire life had spoken to Zayn like that. Even when he was learning to walk, he’d been the prince, the royal highness. Mirah had been born ten years later and though he shared an affectionate relationship with her, she’d never challenged him or provoked him.
Growing up, and even after he’d gone to university, Zayn had never really had a confidant. No one who had the guts to call him on his ego, or arrogance or his sense of importance.
Even his rivals, Xander, Benjamin and Dante, who were probably the only people on the planet who weren’t intimidated by his title and all it entailed, still addressed him as Sheikh.
Infuriated as he was, he couldn’t help notice one thing.
Ms. Christensen believed her brother to be innocent. And her loyalty to said foolish, imbecile brother seemed to be absolute.
Being dedicated to his own sister’s happiness, it was a trait Zayn had to admire in the woman, if nothing else.
Since his temper was dangerously close to tipping over, which was a rarity in itself, he decided he needed a breather from her. And from the annoyingly lingering taste of her.
Now that he was thinking rationally again, he realized there had been a certain lack of experience in her kiss. Dare he think that annoying innocence, that vulnerability in her glazed eyes as she looked up at him, was real?
His mind wanted to wander in too many distracting and interesting directions and Zayn curbed the urge.
A suitable wife who would fix his image in the people’s eyes, that was what he needed, not a conniving waif on a wrongfully guided rescue mission.
His gaze resting on her thoughtfully, he picked up the phone on the desk. In minutes, security would guard both the entrances to the office. He didn’t trust her to not escape or bamboozle some other unsuspecting man into helping her.
“You will stay in this room until I return, Ms. Christensen. If you try to leave, the guards will manhandle you to stop you and then you will cry brutality at the sheikh’s hands. I would like to really not add anything more to the headache you’re already causing me.” Truly, his head was beginning to pound in earnest.
Damn it, he should have never kissed her. He could not show even a small weakness, could not let her have any power in the strange dynamic between them.
The woman seemed extremely resourceful when it came to cunning.
To lose his head and kiss her was one thing. But to have not believed his own instincts that something was odd about her from the beginning, bordered on foolishness. Foolishness that could cost him another scandal that his image couldn’t risk and worse, Mirah’s happiness.
She sprang toward him with a jerk. Lilacs, that was what she smelled of. Zayn took a deep breath before he could restrain the foolishly indulgent impulse. “Wait, you’re imprisoning me here and leaving?”
Deep satisfaction filled him at the panic in her eyes. Finally, another way to fluster Ms. Self-Sufficiency. “Nothing so dramatic, Ms. Christensen. I need to go deal capital punishment to the state official who kept you waiting and the guards who should have caught you before you snuck into my private office. Maybe I’ll fire the entire incompetent staff. In the meantime, I didn’t want you to escape. I still haven’t decided how I’m going to punish you.”
Her skin became a deathly white, her hands wringing each other. She blocked his path, her slender body radiating tension. “Capital punishment? That’s barbaric. They probably were busy escorting the contingent of women you ordered to be brought here, back and forth. You probably can’t see past your bloated ego but this palace is a maze and I’m sure they can’t be everywhere at once and...”
Her chest fell and rose, drawing his attention to her high, deliciously full breasts molded under the soft cotton T-shirt. Her scarf that she had used to wrap loosely around her neck and upper body was trailing from her left arm, exposing what she’d been hiding all this time. Narrow waist that he could probably span with one hand gave way to full hips that made her prim pencil skirt into something altogether provocative. Tall and yet curved, the woman had a model’s figure.
He waited, enjoying the gloriously outraged picture she presented.
“You tricked me!” she said in a voice full of outrage. “You purposely made me believe those men would be punished for something I did.”
He laughed, surprised at finding humor in the whole farce. “You’re not the only one with tricks up their sleeve, Ms. Christensen. Now stay put until I come back.”
* * *
It took him twenty minutes, fifteen minutes too long in his opinion, to surmise the situation.
One of the staff members who knew someone in the legal department had scheduled a meeting with Ms. Christensen. When Zayn had questioned how the woman, a stranger to Khaleej, had known to not only contact the said official but also to arrange for a meeting with him to obtain her brother’s release, his personnel had all frozen in terror.
Finally, the shaking man had come forward and said that the request for meeting had come from someone higher up in the department. Specifically on the recommendation of a Massimiliano Ricci.
