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She succumbed to the urge now. “God, you’re beautiful!”
She winced, bit her lip. But it was out. All she could do now was wait for him to shake his head and turn away, to burst into belated laughter or to finally pick up the invitation he must by now believe she was blatantly issuing.
When none of her predictions came true as his scrutiny stretched, she finally snapped, “Take your cue from me, will you? Just spit out whatever you’re thinking, then be on your way.”
Shehab stared at her. This was completely unexpected.
She was…an absolute surprise. A shock.
The woman the reports and pictures had painted in such clear and cruel detail was nowhere to be found. This woman decimated their assertions and his preconceptions with every move she made, every word she uttered. Her very vibe transmitted a totally alien entity to the one he’d thought he’d have to contend with.
Or she could be the world’s best actress.
Not that it mattered what she was.
Whether she was demon or angel or anything in between, his mission remained unchanged.
But something else had changed.
Until he’d laid eyes on her, he’d been sick with projecting the various forms of revulsion he’d have to endure on this quest. He’d consoled himself that the throne of Judar was worth his very life and more, not only his freedom.
But now what he’d thought would be an abhorrent duty was looking more and more as though it was going to be a decadent indulgence. Now he couldn’t wait to give his all to her seduction.
And entrapment.
Two
She was getting away.
He’d gaped at her too long and she’d gotten fed up. Or angry. With what sounded like a curse, she reached for her shoes, gathered up her skirt and hopped on one foot to put one shoe on. The moment she had the other on, he knew she’d run away.
He moved into her path, his hands taking hers at the wrists in a clasp that was more pantomime than actual grasp.
He extracted the shoe from her unresisting fingers and her supple arm fell to her side. Then, holding her gaze, he went down in front of her, slow, measured, his hand guiding the hand bunching her skirt in the opposite direction to his descent, in a movement just as leisurely, scraping her leg with the rich layers of tulle and chiffon up to her mid-thigh.
Her knees gave a momentary buckle. With another almost-touch, he eased her back against the balustrade. Only then did he break their eye-lock, let his gaze drift down. His fingers followed, hovering an agonizingly unhurried path over the firm cream of her thigh and leg. Once he reached her bare foot, his fingers paused for a long moment. Then they closed on it.
She gasped a hot, sharp sound, jerked, her toes curling.
Someone in the background gave a lewd hoot. He barely registered it. All he could focus on was her labored breathing, his, drowning out the din drifting from the ballroom. He bit his lip to stem the rising stimulation, savoring the first real touch, marveling at the delicacy in her foot’s every line, the strength in every bone. She really was exquisite down to her toes.
He traced each one down to her neat, unpainted toenails, then gave her leg a coaxing push, bent her knee, brought her foot up until its arch rested on his shoulder. She was shaking now, each tremor flowing to his frame through the contact.
From this position, kneeling in front of her, feeling her flailing in his power, he decided it was time to answer her.
“You want to know what I was thinking?” He marveled at the ragged edge lacing his words. A convincing simulation of stirred sincerity. He wasn’t sure what it was. Excitement? Exhilaration? Arousal? Probably all three. “I was thinking it was you who the word beautiful has been coined for. I was thinking that you must be a different species, that you put me to shame.”
“I do?” she croaked. Then she jerked. “Listen, I—I said some embarrassing stuff…more so than the gems that usually dribble from my big mouth. So…sorry, OK? Just forget them and…” The rest was muffled as she tried to extract her foot from his grip.
He only slid her foot down to his heart level, pressed it there, so lightly he let her know she could escape if she wanted, let her know she couldn’t. “Don’t apologize. Never apologize. You misunderstand me. You put me to shame with your candor. And then, how could I forget what you said? When I never want to? I never met a woman, or anyone for that matter, who was anywhere near this delightfully plainspoken.”
“Delightfully? Don’t you mean painfully? At least, it’s painful for me…or more so for me, this time…”
He’d never seen emotions so visibly invading a skin so perfect before. His gaze clung to the progression of her blush, watched the stain of stimulation spreading, taking on a mystical tint in the moonlight. His own blood rushed to his head, to his loins. He raised her clammy foot, dueled with the urge to kiss it, to suckle her toes. An urge he’d never imagined before. He clamped down on it, settled for fitting her shoe back on, a tremor invading his fingers as he slipped her supple foot into the emerald satin-covered creation. It had to be the control he was exerting, so he wouldn’t obey his instincts’ insistence that he heave up and crush this exquisite female in his arms.
He settled for a whispered lip brush on the inside of her calf, then, with a pang of regret, he let her skirt fall over her creamy flesh, and placed her foot down on the ground. “Why should it pain you, my Cinderella? Doing me such a favor?”
She teetered, grasped her support harder. “Favor?”
He rose slowly, drawing out the moment, the movement, both more potent for his letting her sense his leashed desire without touching her. “A huge one. The moment I laid eyes on you, I wondered how I’d approach you without seeming predatory. Afterward, I wondered if it was wise to tell you how I welcomed the dousing and the chance it gave me to be with you. I went through a list of roundabout ways to tell you what you make me feel without offending you or scaring you off. And here you are, showing me that no maneuvers are needed. Not when what we feel is mutual.”
She shook her head as if to clear it. “It is? But—but I don’t even know how I feel.”
He touched a heavy lock of wet bronze silk, oh so close to her breast. “Why don’t you describe it to me?”
She pressed against the balustrade, to escape his influence, her desire to press into him instead. He knew it. “I—I already told you…you make me feel confused and clumsy…”
“And hot,” he finished, elation rising higher.
“Yeah, that, too…” She stopped, groaned. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this…apart from the fact that I have this mind-to-mouth incontinence disease…when it’s not business stuff…” She paused, seemed to struggle for breath, then burst out again. “This is ridiculous. This has to be the full moon…or the champagne. I’m not this socially handicapped.”
He leaned closer, pressing his advantage. “This is not social. This is you and me. The moon has nothing to do with the magic brewing between us. It’s only shedding a stronger light on it. The champagne, we only bathed in.”
“Yeah. Maybe it’s champagne-fumes intoxication?”
He had to chuckle. He wanted to remain intense and focused, but everything she said stimulated his humor as much as his libido. “Intoxication is right. You’re just looking for a far-fetched reason when you’re right here, a vision from a fairy tale who keeps blurting out the most amazing things.”
“A vision? Sure. The word you’re looking for is a sight.”
And the amazing thing was, he felt she wasn’t fishing, that her comment carried conviction. And consternation.
He insisted, his voice lowering, roughening, praise coming easy, flowing true. “A vision. So much more potent for being real. And you think the same about me.”
She nodded, without hesitation. Then her eyes squeezed and she groaned again. Was it possible this persona, the one who seemed devoid of even an ounce of feminine wiles, was real?
She echoed his skepticism. “But how can any of this be real? What is this, anyway?”
“You know what this is. Something you thought you’d never experience. Something I certainly didn’t believe even existed. Instant attraction. Total and brutal.”
Her eyes filled with concession, with bewilderment, as the music built to climactic heights, as if underscoring his assertion, a manifestation of the charge building between them.
Suddenly her wavering gaze wrenched from his.
He dragged it back with a touch brooking no resistance. She wasn’t dismissing him like she had the fates of two kingdoms.
He closed the remaining inches between them until he was a breath away from imprinting himself all over her. The music rose to a crescendo, then held its breath. He pressed his point home. “Don’t try to escape the truth. Acknowledge it.”
“How can I? W-we don’t even know each other’s names.”
The music came to a dramatic end, as if punctuating her gasped protest. So…she’d introduced the subject of exchanging personal details. Good. It was time he introduced her to the alter ego he’d created in the past month for this purpose.
“That’s easily fixed.” He reached for her right hand, so soft and pliant and sweaty, took it to his lips. “My name is Shehab Aal Ajman.” He pressed a hot kiss in the middle of her palm. “Now all you have to do to meet your condition for sanctioning our attraction is to tell me yours, ya jameelati.”
Her eyes widened as she snatched her hand away, fisted it as if it itched, burned. “Is that Arabic?”
“It is…my beauty.”
“Oh—oh…oh.” Her faltering eyes widened. “You’re him?Sheikh Shehab Aal Ajman? But you can’t be!”
“I assure you, I can.” His lips spread in satisfaction. “So you know of me. How’s that for proof that this is fate at work?”
* * *
Realizations piled up in Farah’s mind. But stunned or not, his last statement incited her enough to contradict it.
“Oh, no. Fate’s got nothing to do with it. How could I not know of the venture capitalist who’s been rocking the financial world? In my line of work I know of anyone who’s making or has the potential of making waves. And you’ve been making tsunamis.” She exhaled her still-climbing incredulity. “Excuse me as I struggle with my misconceptions. I had this image in my head, and it seems hilarious now side-by-side with the truth…your truth.”
“And what was that image that my name and reputation summoned to your imagination?”
“A repulsive blob in traditional Bedouin garb, with a high nasal voice and a painful accent, reeking of musk and…”
Somebody gag and sedate her already.
God. What she’d give to rewind and replay their whole meeting. Not that it would turn out any better. Not without her borrowing someone else’s personality along with the gown.
But wonder of wonders, instead of looking affronted, Shehab—whose name now summoned only heated visions of virility and sweeping strength—seemed even more amused. “You mentioned a line of work. You actually work?”
She raised one eyebrow, hackles priming to rise. “Yeah, I work. In fact, I don’t do much besides work. And the reason behind the condescending disbelief would be?”
“Looking at you in this gown fit for the head concubine in a sultan’s harem, my Scheherazade, it’s hard to believe you’re anything but some blessed man’s pampered possession.”
Chagrin shot up inside her. Just as she was about to spit out an obliterating comeback, she realized what he was doing.
“Oh…you’re…Oh! OK…touché,” she mumbled. “I deserved that.”
His smile became all indulgence. “Yes, you did.” He wound a lock of her hair around his forefinger. “So what is this work that’s taken over such a vibrant siren’s life?”
She pretended to look around, her heart skipping. “Siren? Where? Me? Man, this gown is really projecting a false image.” She huffed in irony. “Far from being a siren as the costume suggests—and it was imposed on me, by the way—I have what has to be the world’s most un-sirenlike job. I’m head financial advisor for Bill Hanson of Global View Finance.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly. Was he impressed? Not? What?
His comment didn’t even hint at his opinion. “Sounds as if you find the position…lacking. Why do it then?”
She shrugged. “I know nothing else. My father—uh, adoptive father, as I lately discovered—inhabited the world of high finance, and he raised and bred me to live there. After he died, it was even more imperative that I walk in his footsteps. But by the time I was old enough to take over his business, there was nothing left. So I’m lucky to have landed such a position. I never thought about whether it appeals to me or not. I just do the best job I possibly can.”
Something fired in his eyes. It was gone in seconds, but it made her rush to add, “Listen…about those things I said a minute ago. That was one piece of prejudiced garbage. So, I’m sorry, not only for harboring it, but for actually voicing it—”
His hand rose in a silencing gesture, before he turned it, swept the back of his fingers sensuously across her lips. “What have I told you about apologizing? Never ever, ya helweti.”
She squinted down at the hand feathering her flesh, the perfection of long, strong fingers encased in taut bronze, adorned with just the right amount and pattern of silky black hair. Her mind crowded with images of nuzzling those fingers, suckling them. And as if his touch wasn’t enough, there were the foreign words he kept scalding her with, the way the mobile sculpture of his lips embraced them, the way his awesome voice caressed them…
Her blood tumbled in a spin cycle. “Another endearment?”
Great. She sounded like a fish thrashing out of its bowl. Probably looked it, too.
He gave a nod, deceptively lazy, laden with so much heat and temptation. “My sweet. And you are, so unbelievably sweet, every word you say, everything you do. I can’t wait to find out if your sweetness runs through and through.” He suddenly stood straighter, obliterated the breath between them, let her feel him, if only in whisper touches along all of her. It felt as if his magnetic field was all that kept her upright. “But you haven’t told me your name yet. I need to know it. I need to murmur it against your lips, against every inch of you, taste it with your nectar, get high on it as I do on you. Tell me.”
She tried to find her voice, her name, but couldn’t. She was being swept away, the shores of reason receding. She saw nothing but his eyes, his lips, wanted nothing but for them to fulfill his promise, taste her, possess her, devour her.
But he was waiting, insisting on finding out her name, as per her idiotic objection, before he acted on his promises.
Just tell him. She did, gasped it, “Farah…”
His sharp intake of breath felt as if it tore into her own lungs, flooding her with his scent. “Farah. An Arabic name. This is fate. And your parents knew just what you’d be. Joy.”
She’d always smirked at the meaning of her name. Apart from the sporadic times of contentment in the company of her ultra-busy father, she’d never experienced anything approaching joy.
She gave a laugh, shaky, self-deprecating. “Not according to my mother. I certainly haven’t been her joy.”
“Of course you were. How could you not be?”
“And to answer that, I’ll have to refer you to her.”
His frown was spectacular. “She actually told you that you are not the joy of her life? What mother says that to her child?”
“A mother who turned out to have lived a much more complicated life than I dreamed possible. I guess I was the reminder of my real father. Not a source of happy thoughts.”
He cupped her cheek. Was his hand on fire? She pressed into his palm, wanting to burn. His hand pressed back before going to her nape, tilting up her head. “She had no right to taint your life, to let her emotions for you be polluted by her bitterness against your biological father.”
She pressed her head harder into his assuagement. “Oh, she never said anything like that. It’s my own conclusion. You see, she’s always been morose, withdrawn. She does everything right, but it’s all…held back, as if she’s going through a chore, finding no…joy—there’s that word again—in it. When I learned about my real father, it made sense. She loved him beyond reason it seems, and was never the same after losing him.”
A long moment passed as he stared at her, his face a blank mask. At last he exhaled. “So you don’t feel bitter toward her? Or toward your real father for scarring her, making her less than the perfectly loving mother that you deserved?”
“I don’t do bitterness. What does it serve?”
“Indeed. So, not only a siren, but a deeply sane one, too.”
She coughed a laugh. Sane? Not that she’d noticed since she’d laid eyes on him.
“Is your real father alive? Do you now know who he is?”
“Yeah, to both questions. I found out over a month ago. And let me tell you, it’s been one hell of a roller-coaster ride.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“Uh…I’d appreciate it if we change the subject. It ranks right up there with tearing my skin on barbed wire.” And she wasn’t exaggerating. If anything, she was understating how discovering her real parentage had left her feeling. Her world had blown apart when her mother had dropped the bomb that Francois Beaumont wasn’t her father—that some Middle Eastern monarch was. Then her newfound father, King Atef of Zohayd, had overwhelmed her with his happiness at finding her, his eagerness to know her— his long-lost daughter. And she’d found herself responding, liking him, waiting with baited breath for his next call or message. She’d worried about her eager reaction, wondering if she was desperate for a new father figure to fill the gaping void her adoptive father’s death had left inside her. But King Atef had swept her up in his excitement, soothing her worry that she was betraying her dad’s memory by being so happy to find another father. Then he’d come to meet her and had dropped another bomb. He needed her to marry some prince from a neighboring kingdom as part of a political pact.
And she’d realized that it had been another setup. Another lie. He was just another man pretending emotions he didn’t feel, saying whatever it took to get her to go along with his self-serving plans. She’d shut him and his protestations of sincerity out, kept hoping he’d find another easy way to put his pact through so he’d stop badgering her, so he’d forget she existed….
